Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c7.s4.t6.4

c7.s4.t6.4

This recension is not quite easy to construe so as to work out the required total of 360. The main difficulty lies in the second verse. There may be an error in the text; but taking it as it stands, it would seem that the numeral which is meant to be construed with maṇi-gulphayoḥ is the subsequent catvāri, four, which likewise governs aratni and jaṅgha. That is to say, ‘of wrist-bones and ankle-bones there are four, also in the fore-arms, and likewise in the legs.’ It would also seem that the dual pārṣṇyoḥ is meant to indicate, not the two heels of the feet, but the heels (supposed to be) in the hands as well as in the feet (see §§ 32, 50). The meaning of dve pārṣṇyoḥ, therefore, is ‘there are two bones in either of the two sets of heels’, that is, there are two heels in the hands and two in the feet, or altogether four heels. This, no doubt, gives the impression of a rather forced interpretation: the more obvious meaning would seem to be, ‘there are two bones in the heels (of the feet), and two in the wrists as well as in the ankles’; that is to say, there are only two heels, two wrist-bones, and two ankle-bones. But with this, apparently more natural, interpretation, it is impossible to work out satisfactorily the total of Gaṅgādhar’s recension. That (as shown in § 19) is only possible with the alternative interpretation. And there is this to be said for the latter interpretation, that, as shown by his reconstruction of Charaka’s Medical Version (§§ 8, 23), Gaṅgādhar certainly held the existence of four wrist-bones, as well as four ankle-bones.