Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c7.s2.t2.6

c7.s2.t2.6

*trika* : see § 60. In this connexion Daḷḷana’s explanation of the Suśrutiyan phrase *trika-sambaddha*, triangular in form, is significant as showing the decay of anatomical knowledge subsequent to the time of Suśruta. He says: ‘The place where the two collar-bones connect with the neck, that place is meant by the term *trika*.’¹ This place, as may be seen by referring to Fig. 4, has no apparent connexion with the scapula, and its mention in a description of the latter bone, accordingly, is quite out of place. The explanation of Dallana, however, would appear to be a tradition of considerable antiquity. For its incongruity would seem to have induced Vāgbhaṭa I to change the text of Suśruta’s description of the scapula. In the seventh chapter of the Anatomical Section of his Summary, quoting Suśruta’s description, Vāgbhaṭa I replaces the Suśrutiyan phrase *trika-sambaddha*, trebly bounded or triangular, by the phrase *bāhumūla-sambaddha*, joined to the root of the arm, i. e. to the head of the humerus. Here we see that Vāgbhaṭa I replaces the incongruous expression ‘junction of the collar-bone with the neck’ by the phrase ‘junction with the head of the humerus’. Though this alteration doubtlessly now states a correct fact—the junction of the scapula with the head of the humerus in the glenoid cavity—it entirely abandons Suśruta’s striking description of the triangular shape of the scapula, apparently because Vāgbhaṭa I also did not know what to make of the Suśrutiyan term *trika*.