Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c7.s3.t2.16

c7.s3.t2.16

8. In the Non-medical Version (§ 16) of the statement on the skeleton, as found in the Law-book of Yājnavalkya and in the Institutes of Vishnu, jatru clearly has the meaning of windpipe, for it explicitly says that there is a single jatru. It is true that the text of Yājnavalkya, published by Professor Stenzler (p. 89), reads *jatrv-ekaikam*, which, of course, can only mean ‘one collar-bone on either side’, that is, two collar-bones. But, as may be seen from the evidence set out in § 77, the true manuscript reading is *jatrv-ekam ca*, that is ‘and one windpipe’. It is unfortunate that the editors and translators of two legal treatises allowed themselves to be misled by the ill-considered explanations of the legal commentators (§ 20) into ascribing to those treatises the doctrine that *jatru* referred to the two clavicles.