Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c7.s1.t3.3

c7.s1.t3.3

3. Suśruta’s use of the term kūrca, cluster, which he substitutes for adhiṣṭhāna, base, is by itself sufficient to show that he was aware of the true nature of the ‘base’, as being made up of a cluster of small bones. It is not improbable that he knew even the exact number of the small bones which constitute each cluster (eight in the carpus and seven in the tarsus), but, so far as I know, there is no passage in his Compendium which definitely proves it. Rather inconsistently, but probably in deference to the older view, he continued, for the purpose of his list, to count his ‘cluster’ as one bone. But of course, properly interpreted, this only means that he counted the ‘cluster’ as a composite bone, or rather as a set of bones.