Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c7.s2.t4.18

c7.s2.t4.18

1. Śroṇi, pelvis, or the pelvic cavity, consisting of śroṇi-phalaka, or nitamba, hip-blade; bhaga or bhag-āsthi, pubes or pubic bone; trika, sacrum or sacral bone; and guda or gud-āsthi, coccyx or anal (caudal) bone. The term śroṇi-phalaka is peculiar to the list of Charaka (§ 4), while Suśruta (§ 27) and Vāgbhaṭa I (§ 37) use the term nitamba. The full form bhag-āsthi, bone of the pubes, or the pubic arch, is employed in the list of Charaka. The shorter form bhaga occurs in the lists of Suśruta and Vāgbhaṭa I. In literary Sanskrit, and in popular usage, the word bhaga has the narrower meaning of the external female sexual organ, the vulva¹ (yoni); but in medical usage it has a wider meaning, irrespective of sex. There it denotes the inferior part, or base, of the trunk, that is, in the male, the space between the anus and scrotum, or the perinaeum; in the female, the space occupied by the vulva and the perinaeum. When not referring to the trunk as a whole, but to its bony constituents, bhaga, or more accurately bhag-āsthi, or bone of bhaga, denotes the bone contained in that inferior part, namely, the pubic arch, made up by the two ossa pubis and the symphysis (Figs. 4, 21). It is quite correctly described by Chakrapāṇidatta (§ 11, cl. 2, p. 36) as ‘the cross (tiryak) bone which binds together the haunch-bones (ilium plus ischium) in front’. The full form gud-āsthi, or bone of the anus, anal (or caudal) bone, occurs in the Compendium of Vāgbhaṭa II.² But in the lists of Suśruta and Vāgbhaṭa I the shorter form guda is used. That word ordinarily means anus, but of course in the lists, being the denotation of a bone, it must signify the anal, or caudal bone, that is, the coccyx.