Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c7.t1.2

c7.t1.2

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.