Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c7.s3.t8: § 68. The Teeth and their Sockets
Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c7.s3.t8
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§ 68. The Teeth and their Sockets
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1. *Danta*, tooth; *dant-olūkhala*, tooth-socket, or *sthāla*, socket, or *sūkṣma*, minute bone. The term *dant-olūkhala* for the socket of a tooth occurs in the Medical Version of the system of Ātreya, as reported by Charaka (§ 4) and Bheḍa (§ 12), and adopted by Vāgbhaṭa I (§ 37), while the other two terms, *sthāla* and *sūkṣma*, are peculiar to the Non-medical Version (§§ 16, 22, cl. 4).
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2. The term *dant-olūkhala*, or tooth-socket, denotes the alveolar processes. These processes are, in reality, only portions of the maxillary bones; but Ātreya-Charaka, with whom Vāgbhaṭa I agrees, counts them as separate bones—a procedure which affects his general view of the two maxillaries, fully explained in § 65. Suśruta, in consequence of his counting the maxillaries as a pair of single, undivided bones, discards the socket-bones altogether from his list (§ 27) and counts only the teeth.
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3. With reference to the number of the teeth (*danta*) Ātreya-Charaka and Suśruta agree. Both state them correctly to number thirty-two. Ātreya-Charaka goes even so far as to count a corresponding number of sockets. Accordingly he divides either alveolar process into thirty-two alveoli, each of which is counted, in his list (§ 4), as a separate bone.
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4. As to the real morphological character of the teeth, the ancient Indian anatomists, of course, were uninformed. They took them to be bone, on account, obviously, of their hardness, and probably also of their white appearance, and because they were found to remain in the skull after every vestige of other tissue had disappeared. As a matter of fact, they ‘resemble compact bone in appearance and in composition’,¹ yet in reality they are more closely allied to the hair. For both are modifications of a papilla of the outer integument of the body. The tooth, ‘though intimately connected with the bony skeleton, is really a calcified papilla of the mucous membrane.’¹
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¹ See Dr. Potter’s *Compend of Human Anatomy*, p. 142, and Dr. Gerrish’s *Textbook of Anatomy*, 2nd ed., p. 723.
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§ 69. The Nails
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Nakha, nail. The case of the nails is similar to that of the teeth. They, like the teeth, are allied to the hair, being modifications of the cutaneous membrane. The ancient Indian anatomists looked upon the nails as a waste product (mala) of the body secreted in the process of growth of the bones. Consistently with this theory, Suśruta excludes the nails from his count of the bones (§ 27). On the other hand, Ātreya, rather inconsistently as the commentator Chakrapāṇidatta indicates (ante, p. 35), includes them in his list of bones; and, of course, as all the three versions of his system (Charaka, § 4, Bheḍa, § 12, Non-medical, §§ 16, 22) state, he counts twenty of them, one for each finger and each toe.
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§ 70. The Eyeballs
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1. Akṣi-koṣa, eyeball. The organ denoted by this term is included among the bones only in the system of Suśruta. The system of Ātreya, as reported in the Medical Versions of Charaka (§ 4) and Bheḍa (§ 12), does not include them, and in this respect it is followed by Vāgbhaṭa I (§ 37). In the Non-medical Version (§ 16), it is true, the eyeballs are included in Ātreya’s system; but its testimony cannot avail against that of the Medical Versions; and the probability is that it adopted the eyeballs under the influence of the system of Suśruta (§ 17, cl. 3). But even as regards the latter system, the eyeballs have experienced strange vicissitudes. For they are absent from Suśruta’s list in its Traditional Recension (§ 27), though Suśruta explicitly mentions them in his class-list of the bones as well as in other passages of his Compendium. That his list in its genuine form (§ 34) must have included them has been shown in § 30, cl. 4.
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2. Suśruta looked upon the sclerotic coat of the eyeball (Fig. 1) as made of cartilage; and as he counted cartilages as tender, or immature bones (taruṇa), he included the two eyeballs among the bones of the skeleton (§ 30). Ātreya-Charaka, on the other hand, excluded them, not because he knew them to be non-cartilaginous, but probably because the prepared skeleton would ordinarily be deprived of them. As a matter of fact, the sclerotic is not made of cartilage, but of ‘connective tissue with elastic fibres’;¹ but to the untrained eye the two substances are so nearly alike that the mistake of a primitive anatomist, such as Suśruta, may be easily understood.
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¹ Dr. Potter’s *Compend of Human Anatomy*, p. 198.