Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c7.s3.t2.7.4

c7.s3.t2.7.4

The two terms ūrdhva-jatru and jatrūrdhva are synonymous, and denote one of the three parts into which the body is divided. These three parts are: (1) the four extremities (*śākhā*), (2) the trunk or middle (*antarādhi* or *madhya*), and (3) the neck and head (*śiro-grīvā*). It is the last-named portion which is also called *ūrdhva-jatru* or *jatrūrdha*, i.e. ‘the portion from the neck upwards’, and inclusive of the neck. Both forms of the term are frequently met with. Thus Suśruta, describing the respective scope of the various parts of Medical Science, in the first chapter of the Introductory Section (*Sūtra Sthāna*, Jīv. ed., p. 2), says of Minor Surgery, that it concerns itself with ‘the cure of the diseases which have their seat in the portion of the body from the neck upwards (*ūrdhva-jatru*), that is, those maladies which affect the ears, eyes, mouth, nose, and other organs’. Chakrapāṇidatta, in his Commentary (*Bhānumati*, p. 20), here says that the term *jatru* means ‘the base of the neck’ (*grīvā-mūla*), and explains the phrase *ūrdhva-jatru* to mean ‘from the neck (base of the neck) upwards’ (*jatruṇa ūrdhvam*). Daḷḷana, in his comment on the same phrase (Jīv. ed., p. 7), says that according to some ‘*jatru* means the base of the neck, and according to others, the point of junction of the sternum and clavicles’. In accordance with this definition, Suśruta, in the Anatomical Section, chap. III, cl. 7 (Jīv. ed., p.