Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c7.s2.t2.3

c7.s2.t2.3

³ As regards Suśruta, it has been shown in §§ 29, 30, 56, that the omission of the shoulder-blades from his list is a textual error, due in all probability to an ancient misreading (or false emendation), by some ignorant scribe who wrote *saṃjña*, so-called, for *aṃsaja*, shoulder-blade; and that, as a matter of fact, Suśruta explicitly mentions the shoulder-blade as one of those bones which he classifies as pan-shaped (*kapāla*). In reality, therefore, the genuine list of Suśruta (§ 34) enumerates both bones which constitute the shoulder-girdle, the clavicle as well as the scapula. His explicit statement regarding the existence of the two bones, together with other evidence on the subject, has already been quoted in the preceding paragraph. An additional piece of evidence, however, may here be adduced. In the sixth chapter of his Anatomical Section (*Śārīra Sthāna*), in which Suśruta enumerates the so-called ‘vital spots’ (*marman*) in the body, he says that ‘there are eight such places in the bones’, and among these eight bones he enumerates the *aṃsa-phalaka*, or shoulder-blades (Original Text in § 97, cl. 4).