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Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c6.s3.t2: § 39. Relation of Vāgbhaṭa’s List to the Traditional List of Charaka and Suśruta

Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c6.s3.t2

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§ 39. Relation of Vāgbhaṭa’s List to the Traditional List of Charaka and Suśruta

c6.s3.t2.1

A comparison of the list of Vāgbhaṭa I with the traditional lists of Charaka and Suśruta, as exhibited in the Table in the preceding paragraph, brings out the following points:

c6.s3.t2.2

1. The principle on which the list of Vāgbhaṭa I is constructed is to take the list of Suśruta as its basis, and add to it such items of the list of Charaka as do not occur in it.

c6.s3.t2.3

2. The list of Suśruta which forms the basis of the list of Vāgbhaṭa is, in every point, identical with the traditional list of Suśruta as it at present exists (§ 27). This is proved by the fact that the list of Vāgbhaṭa shows every one of the inconsistencies which have been exposed in §§ 30-3 as existing in the Traditional Recension of Suśruta’s list. That is to say: (a) both reckon the aggregate of Nos. 3-5 (§ 37, or Nos. 2-4 in § 27) as ten, resulting in the aggregate forty for the four extremities; (b) in order to make up that aggregate ten, both count eight clusters, and four ankle-bones and four wrist-bones; also they count four bases in addition to the four clusters; (c) both count four heels; (d) both omit the two shoulder-blades¹ and the two eyeballs; (e) both count wrongly eight bones and one bone in Nos. 13 and 24 respectively.

c6.s3.t2.4

¹ The two shoulder-blades, it is true, appear in the list of Vāgbhaṭa I, but they have been adopted into it from the list of Charaka.

c6.s3.t2.5

3. The list of Vāgbhaṭa I is indebted to the list of Charaka in two ways: (a) in order to raise the grand total from 300 to 360, the former adopts Nos. 1, 18, 19, 23, 29 from the latter; and (b) in order to obtain the aggregate ten for Nos. 3-6, it similarly adopts No. 4, bases (§ 31).

c6.s3.t2.6

4. The list of Charaka on which Vāgbhaṭa I has drawn for his additions, is identical with the Traditional Recension of it as we have it in the manuscripts of the present day (§ 4). This is proved by the fact that both lists possess No. 18, shoulders, and No. 19, shoulder-blades. It has been shown in § 6 that the repetition of *aṃsa*, shoulder, by the side of *aṃsa-phalaka*, shoulder-blade, is an ancient corruption of the traditional text of the list of Charaka. Seeing that Vāgbhaṭa I adopts the error into his own list, it is evident that he read the list of Charaka, as we still have it, in the traditional text of our own day. The procedure of Vāgbhaṭa I, however, explains a peculiarity of his system. The shoulder-girdle contains only two separate bones, the collar-bone (*akṣaka*, No. 17) and the shoulder-blade (*aṃsa-phalaka*, No. 19), see § 56, cl. 2. Finding, in his text of Charaka, the apparent mention of *aṃsa* as a third bone, and not suspecting an error, he appears to have explained it by taking *aṃsa* to refer to the so-called 'shoulder-peak' (*aṃsa-kūṭa*), or the acromion process (§ 55, cl. 5). In this explanation he would probably have felt himself justified by the practice, observed by Charaka and Suśruta, of occasionally counting 'processes' of bones as separate bones (§ 44, cl. 1); but in doing so, he failed to notice that with those two writers *aṃsa*, in its technical sense, is a synonym of *akṣaka* and denotes the collar-bone, while, when used in a loose way, it indicates the shoulder generally (§ 55, cl. 4).

c6.s3.t2.7

Vāgbhaṭa I’s ill-conceived interpretation of the term *aṃsa* led to another unfortunate result, inasmuch as it appears to have served as the basis of the definition of *aṃsa*, which is given in the *Amarakośa*, the famous Vocabulary of Amarasiṃha, and which, in its turn, led to the misinterpretation of the term *jatru*; see § 62, cl. 8.

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