Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c6.s3.t3.14

c6.s3.t3.14

2. It is Vāgbhaṭa’s extended application of the homological principle which explains the origin of the Traditional Recension of Suśruta’s list of the bones. That list (§ 27) states only the aggregate of the three items (Nos. 2, 3, 4), sole (*tala*), cluster (*kūrca*), ankle (*gulpha*). In order to determine the details of this aggregate, Vāgbhaṭa I consulted the list of Charaka. Here (§ 4) he found the three items, No. 5, long bones (*śalākā*), No. 6, base (*sthāna*), No. 8, ankle (*gulpha*). Failing to notice that the bases of Charaka were equivalent to the clusters of Suśruta, he concluded that Suśruta’s sole (*tala*) must include the long bones (*śalākā*) as well as the bases (*sthāna*) of Charaka’s list; and he thus set up four items: long bones, base, cluster, ankle, as identical with Suśruta’s three items: sole, cluster, ankle. Further, noticing that the list of Charaka counted four ankle-bones in the two feet (No. 8 in § 4), he allotted two bones to Suśruta’s ankle, and similarly two bones, to his cluster, forgetting that Suśruta himself had elsewhere allotted only one bone to either, the cluster and the ankle.¹ Such would seem to have been the consideration on which Vāgbhaṭa I arrived at the details of his own four (or Suśruta’s three) items; as thus: