Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c7.s2.t1.14

c7.s2.t1.14

In another passage in the same sixth chapter, in which Suśruta describes the forty-four ‘vital spots which cause weakness’ (*vaikalya-karaṇi marmāṇi*), he enumerates (Original Text in § 97, cl. 4) among their number the two *aṃsa* or collar-bones, and the two *aṃsa-phalaka* or shoulder-blades. Exceptionally, it would seem that Suśruta employed the term *aṃsa* also to denote the shoulder-blade. Thus in the passage, quoted in § 30, in which he divides the bones of the skeleton in five classes, according to their shapes, he places the bones which he there calls *aṃsa* among the pan-shaped ones. It is obvious from this very classification that by the term *aṃsa* Suśruta can there mean no other than the shoulder-blades, for these, as a fact, are pan-shaped, broad, and flat bones, while the collar-bones are short, cylindrical bones which belong to the class described by Suśruta as *nalaka*, or reed-like. In another passage of the fifth chapter, in which Suśruta enumerates the muscles (*peśī*) of the body, he says that ‘there are seven muscles round about the collar-bone (*akṣaka*) and shoulder-blade (*aṃsa*, Original Text in § 97, cl. 4). Here again it is obvious that by the term *aṃsa* Suśruta cannot mean the collar-bones, which are already indicated by the term *akṣaka*. The term *aṃsa*, therefore, can only refer to the shoulder-blades. It is possible that Suśruta might have used the term *aṃsa*, which in the ordinary Sanskrit is only a general name for the shoulder, indifferently to denote sometimes the collar-bones, and at other times the shoulder-blades. But such a practice is obviously very inconvenient, and it is not at all probable that Suśruta was guilty of it. It is far more probable that the traditional text of the passages in which Suśruta is made to use the term *aṃsa* to denote the shoulder-blades is corrupt; and that in every such case, instead of *aṃsa* we should read *aṃsa-ja*, ‘sprung from the shoulder.’ The latter term quite properly describes the shoulder-blades as springing from the shoulder (Fig. 12). It has already been explained in § 29 that the term *saṃjñā*, ‘so-called,’ which is so unaccountably found in the Traditional Recension of Suśruta’s list of the skeletal bones, suggests itself to be a corruption of the term *aṃsaja*, caused by copyists unfamiliar with skeletal anatomy and its terms. It may be suggested that probably in the two passages above referred to we should also read *aṃsaja* instead of *aṃsa*.¹ It would thus appear that Suśruta employs the following pairs of terms: (1) *akṣaka* and *aṃsa*, to denote the collar-bones; (2) *aṃsaphalaka* and *aṃsa-ja*, to denote the shoulder-blades; the last-mentioned term *aṃsa-ja* being misunderstood by copyists and changed either into *saṃjñā* or simply into *aṃsa*.