Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c7.s3.t8.7

c7.s3.t8.7

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.