Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c6.s3.t3.4.1

c6.s3.t3.4.1

4. It is a well-known fact that the text of Suśruta’s Compendium, after a time, fell into some disorder, which necessitated revision or reconstruction. Several such revisions, or reconstructions, must have been undertaken at different times. The first reconstruction may have been that to which we owe the addition of the Supplementary Section (Uttara Tantra). This is traditionally ascribed to Nāgārjuna, in the second century A.D. (§ 2). Seeing that the traditional text of neither Charaka nor Suśruta existed about 350 A.D., the approximate date of the Law-book of Yājñavalkya, it follows that Nāgārjuna, if he made any reconstruction of the text of Suśruta’s Compendium, can at all events not be credited with the particular reconstruction of Suśruta’s statement on the skeleton. Another revision was made by Candraṭa, the son of Tiṣaṭa. He states this fact himself at the end of his revised text, which he calls a pāṭha-śuddhi or ‘Emendation of the Text’. We have a copy of this revised text in the unique manuscript of the India Office Library, No. 1842 (Cat. No. 2646), described on pp. 927, 928 of the catalogue. So far as a cursory examination permits one to judge, it does occasionally, though not very materially, differ from the Traditional Recension of the Compendium. But in the statement on the skeleton there occurs a noteworthy varia lectio.