Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c7.t1: § 44. Preliminary Remarks
Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c7.t1
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§ 44. Preliminary Remarks
c7.t1.1
1. BEFORE proceeding to the detailed identification of the bones which, according to the early Indian anatomists, compose the human skeleton, it may be useful to note the following preliminary points.
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2. According to modern Anatomy, there are about 200 bones in the adult human skeleton.¹ The early Indian anatomists, on the other hand, count either 360 (Ātreya) or 300 (Suśruta) bones. This large excess is principally due to the fact that (besides including the teeth, nails, and cartilages) they counted prominent parts of bones, such as are now known as ‘processes’ or ‘protuberances’, as if they were separate bones. Their reasons for counting in this manner were mainly three.
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¹ See Dr. Gerrish's *Textbook of Anatomy*, p. 113.
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3. Sometimes processes, or protuberances, of bones were popularly known by special names, and regarded as special bones. Examples are the malleoli, or ankle-bones, and the styloid processes, or wrist-bones. In such cases it was probably a mere concession, made by the early Indian anatomists, to popular usage that they enumerated them in their lists as separate bones. In other cases the separate enumeration of processes or protuberances was due to an exaggerated regard for the homological principle. For example the right and left halves of the skeleton were regarded as homologous. Hence, seeing that the vertebral column lay in the median line, the transverse processes on the right and left of the several vertebrae were counted as separate homologous bones (§ 59). Sometimes, again, it was a fancy for artificial symmetry which led to the multiplication of bones. To this cause, probably, is due the assumption of the existence of a third joint in the thumb and great toe (§ 47), and of twelve costal tubercles instead of ten (§ 58).
c7.t1.5
4. All these cases are examples of the multiplication of bones; but the opposite process of unification also occurs. Here a number of bones is counted as a single bone, either from deference to an older or popular theory, or because they were thought to constitute a peculiar unity. Conspicuous examples are the bones of the carpus and tarsus (§ 49), and, in Suśruta’s system, the ankle-bones (§ 52).