Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c6.s2.t6.7

c6.s2.t6.7

in the system of Suśruta, and the divergences in Nos. 2, 14, 17, 19, 21 depend on differences of anatomical theory which will be satisfactorily explained in the Third Section. There remain Nos. 15 and 18. It is noteworthy that these are precisely the two items in which the Traditional Recension agrees with the list of Vāgbhaṭa I (Nos. 13, 24 in § 37). Seeing that in two other points, already mentioned in § 31, the Traditional Recension has been unfavourably influenced by the list of Vāgbhaṭa I, it suggests itself as probable that in these two items also the same influence has been at work in causing the numbers eight and one to be adopted for the bones of the breast and palate respectively. As regards No. 18, palate, the list of Charaka gives two as the number of the bones of the palate; and there is no apparent reason why Suśruta should be credited with changing it in his list (see § 67). As to No. 15, we have a significant hint in the Non-medical Version of Ātreya’s list of the bones (§ 16). The genuine list of Ātreya, as handed down by Charaka and Bheḍa, has only fourteen bones for the breast (No. 24 in §§ 4, 12, and No. 21 in § 7). The Non-medical Version of that list must have obtained its false number seventeen from some extraneous medical source; and it suggests itself that this source can have been no other than the list of Suśruta, as it stood at the time when the Non-medical Version was composed.