Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c7.s2.t4.24

c7.s2.t4.24

3. On the other hand, in the system of Ātreya-Charaka, the anal (*guda*) and sacral (*trika*) bones are not reckoned as parts of the pelvis, but as a portion of the vertebral column. In that system, indeed, those two bones are considered to constitute but a single bone, which is included among the forty-five vertebrae (§ 59, cl. 5) without being named separately. This, as has been stated (§ 59, cl. 6), is one of the marks of the divergent pelvic systems of Suśruta and Ātreya-Charaka. Suśruta seems to have been the first to count the sacrum and coccyx separately, and thus to recognize the distinction between true and false vertebrae. It is also not improbable that he was the first particularly to observe the triangular shape of the sacrum, and to give it the name *trika*, or triangle, which expresses that fact, and by which it is now generally known. It should be noted, however, that Suśruta’s *trika* is not quite identical with the sacrum of modern anatomy. He treats the first sacral vertebra as belonging to the lumbar region, and as forming a sixth lumbar vertebra (§ 59, cl. 2, 4). His sacrum, therefore, comprises only four vertebrae, and it constitutes the triangular bone which is made up of these four, and which subtends the ridge that connects the two uppermost foramina of the sacrum (Fig. 20, *h*).