Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c7.s2.t3.10

c7.s2.t3.10

6. It is not quite so easy to recognize a rational ground for the number eight of the list of Vāgbhaṭa I. The only explanation that can be suggested is that it arose from an unintelligent attempt at combining the doctrines of Ātreya-Charaka and Suśruta. While accepting the former’s theory of a series of bars, Vāgbhaṭa I added to it an additional eighth bar, in conformity with the count of Suśruta. At the same time he abandoned the homological division into halves, which would have given him sixteen bones for the breast. The reason of this abandonment, probably, was that the duplication of the number eight (or, for that matter, of the number seven) would have interfered with his obtaining the requisite total of 360 bones for the whole skeleton (§§ 38, 41).