Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c6.s3.t2.6

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).