Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c7.s2.t1.6

c7.s2.t1.6

3. In the shorter form akṣa, the term occurs only in the Non-medical Version of the system of Ātreya (§ 16),¹ where, however, as stated in § 20, cl. 4, it is wrongly explained by the commentators of the Law-book of Yājñavalkya to signify ‘a bone on the edge of the eye’, or, ‘a bone between the eye and the ear.’ And this unintelligent guess at the meaning of akṣa was copied from them by Nanda Paṇḍita, in his Commentary on the Institutes of Vishnu, where he says that the term means ‘the part below the temples, between the ear and the eye’.¹ In medical works the term never occurs with that meaning. The only other way in which I have noticed it used in a medical work is as a synonym of indriya, or organ of sense. With this meaning it occurs not unfrequently in the Compendium of Vāgbhaṭa II (e.g. Sūtra Sthāna, chap. I, verse 33; X. 2; XII. 17; Śārīra Sthāna, III. 5), where the commentator expressly says that ‘the organs of sense are called akṣa’ (akṣāṇi indriyāṇi ucyante). It may be noted, however, that Vāgbhaṭa I, in his Summary, in the corresponding passages never uses the term akṣa, but always indriya (Sūtra Sthāna, chap. XIX, vol. I, p. 96, l. 21; XIX, p. 106, l. 16; Śārīra Sthāna, chap. V, p. 220, l. 8).²