Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c6.s2.t3.18

c6.s2.t3.18

NOTE.—With regard to the terms which occur in the class-list, *nalaka* means a reed, but not necessarily a hollow reed; it may be solid like the male bamboo. As used by the Indian anatomists it denotes any long bone, whether tubular or solid. Suśruta does not specify the bones which he likens to a *nalaka* or reed, but only says that they are ‘the remainder’, that is, that they are all those bones which do not fall into any of the other four classes. The process of exhaustion thus indicated shows that he classed as ‘reed-like’ bones the following—the phalanges, the metacarpals and metatarsals, the bones of the forearms, legs, arms, and thighs, the collar-bones and the jaw-bones. The commentators Dallana (ed. Jīv., p. 576) and Gayadāsa (Cambridge MS., Add. 2491, fol. 49 *a*, line 3), following a doctrine of Bhoja (Original Text in § 96, cl. 3), include the clusters, ankle-bones and wrist-bones among the ‘reed-like’ bones. But seeing that these particular bones have not the smallest resemblance to reeds, their inclusion only proves the total want of experimental knowledge of them on the part of Bhoja and the commentators.