Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c7.s3.t2.7.1

c7.s3.t2.7.1

4. In the earliest medical compendia the term *jatru* is either synonymous with *grīvā*, neck, or signifies more especially a particular aspect of it. The neck contains two structures, posteriorly the cervical column, denoted more particularly by the term *grīvā*, and anteriorly the windpipe, denoted more particularly by the term *jatru*. As the latter term, in a general way, also denotes the whole neck, Suśruta prefers, in his list of bones (§ 27), to employ the more specialized term *kaṇṭhanāḍī*, throat-pipe, to indicate the windpipe as distinguished from the cervical column. On the other hand, outside his list, he frequently uses the two terms *jatru* and *grīvā* as practically synonymous, to denote sometimes the windpipe, sometimes the neck generally. Thus in his class-list of the bones (§ 30), enumerating the cartilages, or tender bones (*taruṇa*), he makes them to include ‘the nose, ears, neck (*grīvā*), and eyeballs’ (Original Text in § 88). Here obviously the term *grīvā* cannot refer to the cervical column, but must denote the windpipe. Again in the sixth chapter of the Anatomical Section (*Śārīra Sthāna*), speaking of certain thirty-seven ‘vital spots’ (*marman*), he says (Jīv. ed., p. 336, cl. 4) that they are situated ‘from the neck (*grīvā*) upwards’; but afterwards (Jīv., pp. 342–3, cl. 32), mentioning them in detail, he describes them as ‘situated from the neck (*jatru*) upwards’;