Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c7.s3.t1.4

c7.s3.t1.4

2. There is no part of the skeleton with regard to the number of bones of which the lists differ more widely. The list of Ātreya-Charaka (§ 4) makes the number of neck-bones to be fifteen. The Traditional Recension of the list of Suśruta (§ 27) makes it to be only nine, while the list of Vāgbhaṭa I (§ 37) makes it to be thirteen. As a matter of fact, the number of the cervical vertebrae is seven; but they greatly differ among themselves in some respects. The first vertebra, called the atlas (Fig. 21), is practically a mere ring. It lacks the body and spinous process of the normal vertebra. The second vertebra, called the axis (Fig. 22) consists practically only of a large strong body, surmounted by the odontoid process, on which as a pivot the atlas rotates.¹ The remaining five vertebrae possess the normal type (§ 59, cl. 3), and consist of a body and three (one spinous and two transverse) processes; but these processes, in all except the seventh, are short and bifid at the extremity (Fig. 23), and hence not very prominent. The seventh vertebra is exceptional: it approaches in shape the upper thoracic