Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c7.s3.t6.6

c7.s3.t6.6

lines in Fig. 32. It will be seen from it that the central facial bone must include also the ‘body’ of the superior maxillary, which appears to have been looked upon as forming a continuous whole with the contiguous cheek or malar bones (gaṇḍa, or *gaṇḍa-kūṭa*). A more experienced anatomist, such as Suśruta was, could not fail to see that what was supposed to be an undivided central bone was in reality a very composite structure, made up partly of a number of separate small bones, partly of portions of the bones contiguous to the hypothetical central bone. The former are the two malar bones and the two nasal bones, which accordingly Suśruta counted separately in his list (§ 27). The latter are (1) the superciliary ridges which form merely two prominent portions of the frontal bone, and (2) the lower part of the hypothetical central bone which forms really the ‘body’ of the superior maxillary. Consequently Suśruta altogether omitted the two superciliary ridges, or brows (*lalāṭa*), from his list, while he included (as shown in § 65) the lower part of the central bone in one—the upper—of his two jaw-bones (*hanu*). With regard to the nose, including its cartilaginous portion, Suśruta counted three bones. In accordance with his homological principle, he took the two nasal bones as constituting a single bone in the median line, and added the two lateral cartilages of the external nostrils. That he included the latter is proved by the fact of his enumerating the nose (*ghrāṇa*) among the tender bones (*taruṇa*): see the class-list of the bones in § 30.