Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c7.s3.t7: § 67. The Hard Palate
Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c7.s3.t7
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§ 67. The Hard Palate
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1. Tālu, palate; tālūṣaka, palatal cavity. The former term is used by Suśruta (§ 27) and Vāgbhaṭa (37). The latter is peculiar to the system of Ātreya, and is found in the lists of Charaka (§ 4) and Bheḍa (§ 12) as well as in its Non-medical Version (§ 16).
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2. Both Ātreya-Charaka and Suśruta enumerate two palate bones in their lists; but these bones are not identical with what are called the palate bones in modern anatomy. The latter being very small bones, situated in the interior of the skull, do not appear to have been observed as separate bones by the ancient Indian anatomists. The two bones which the latter call palate bones are identical with the so-called palatine process, which is a portion of the superior maxillary bone (Fig. 30). This process consists of halves, which, projecting from either side of the junction of the alveolar process and ‘body’ of the superior maxillary, meet in the median line, in a ridge or raphé, and thus form the roof of the mouth, or what is the major portion of the hard palate.¹ These halves of the hard palate form two shallow concavities; and it is these, no doubt, which Atreya-Charaka appropriately denotes by the term tālūṣaka, or palatal cavity, and which Suśruta, in his class-list of the bones (§ 30) describes as being kapāla, or pan-shaped. From this point of view those two medical authorities are quite correct in counting, in their lists, two palates (*tālu*) or two palatal concavities (*tāluṣaka*). Vāgbhaṭa I, who ignores the median ridge, counts only one palate (*tālu*).
c7.s3.t7.3
¹ See Dr. Gerrish’s *Textbook of Anatomy*, 2nd ed., pp. 195, 717.