Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c7.s3.t2.14

c7.s3.t2.14

7. Turning now to the non-medical evidence, we have the earliest in the Vedas. Here we find in the Rigveda, VIII. 1¹², jatru used in the plural number: purā jatrubhya ātrdaḥ, i.e. ‘before making an incision in the costal cartilages.’ So also in Rigveda, XI. 3¹⁰, antrāṇi jatravaḥ, i.e. ‘the entrails are (represented by) the costal cartilages.’ Whatever else jatru may mean, it can in these two passages not denote the clavicles, of which there are only two, and which would be expressed by the dual number. The plural excludes any reference to the clavicles. The meaning of jatru in the plural, however, is clearly indicated in a later Vedic work, the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa. It says (§ 42, cl. 4), ‘the ribs are fastened at either end, exteriorly to the thoracic vertebrae, and interiorly to the costal cartilages (jatru).’ It even mentions their number to be sixteen (§ 42, cl. 3), ‘there are eight costal cartilages (jatru) on the one side, and eight on the other; the sternum is the seventeenth (bone of the breast).’