________________
286 Speculations in the Medical Schools (ch. (uras)"; 12. the windpipe (grīvāḥ in the plural)2; 13. the breast (stanau in the dual)3; 14. the shoulder-blade (kaphodau in the dual)4; 15. the shoulder-bones (skandhān in the plural)5; 16. the backbone (prşțiḥ
1 Caraka counts fourteen bones in the breast. Indian anatomists counted cartilages as new bones (taruna asthi). There are altogether ten costal cartilages on either side of the sternum. But the eighth, ninth and tenth cartilages are attached to the seventh. So, if the seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth cartilages are considered as a single bone, there are altogether seven bones on either side of the sternum. This gives us the total number of fourteen which Caraka counts. The sternum was not counted by Caraka separately. With him this was the result of the continuation of the costal cartilages attached to one another without a break. Suśruta and Vägbhaţa I curiously count eight bones in the breast, and this can hardly be accounted for. Hoernle's fancied restoration of the ten of Susruta does not appear to be proved. Yājñavalkya, however, counts seventeen, i.e, adds the sternum and the eighth costal cartilage on either side to Caraka's fourteen bones, which included these three. Hoernle supposes that Yājñavalkya's number was the real reading in Suśruta; but his argument is hardly convincing.
? The windpipe is composed of four parts, viz. larynx, trachea, and two bronchi. It is again not a bone, but a cartilage; but it is yet counted as a bone by the Indian anatomists, e.g. Caraka calls it "jatru” and Susruta "kanthanāļi." Hoernle has successfully shown that the word jatru was used in medical books as synonymous with windpipe or neck generally. Hoernle says that originally the word denoted cartilaginous portions of the neck and breast (the windpipe and the costal cartilages), as we read in the Satapatha-brāhmana: "tasmād imā ubhayatra parśavo baddhāḥ kikasāsu ca jatruşu” (the ribs are fastened at either end, exteriorly to the thoracic vertebrae and interiorly to the costal cartilages-jatru). In medical works it means the cartilaginous portion of the neck, i.e. the windpipe (Caraka), and hence is applied either to the neck generally or to the sterno-clavicular articulation at the base of the neck (Susruta). It is only as late as the sixth or seventh century A.D. that, owing to a misinterpretation of the anatomical terms sandhi and amsa, it was made to mean clavicle. See Hoernle's Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, p. 168.
3. "Pārsvayoś catur-vimsatiḥ pārsvayos tāvanti caiva sthālakāni tāvanti caiva sthālakārbudāni," i.e. there are twenty-four bones in the pārsva (ribs), twentyfour sthālakas (sockets), and twenty-four sthālakārbudas (tubercles). Suśruta speaks of there being thirty-six ribs on either side. A rib consists of a shaft and a head;" at the point of junction of these two parts there is a tubercle which articulates with the transverse process of corresponding vertebrae, and probably this tubercle is arbuda." There are, no doubt, twenty-four ribs. The sthālakas and arbudas cannot properly be counted as separate bones; but, even if they are counted, the total number ought to be 68 bones, as Hoernle points out, and not 72, since the two lowest have no tubercles.
. Kaphoda probably means scapula or shoulder-blade. Caraka uses the word amsa-phalaka. Caraka uses two other terms, akşaka (collar-bone) and amsa. This word amsa seems to be a wrong reading, as Hoernle points out; for in reality there are only two bones, the scapula and the collar-bone. But could it not mean the acromion process of the scapula? Though Suśruta omits the shoulder-blade in the counting of bones in Mārira, v. (for this term is akşakasamjne), yet he distinctly names amsa-phalaka in Sarira, vi. 27, and describes it as triangular (trika-sambaddhe); and this term has been erroneously interpreted as grīvāyā amsa-dvayasya ca yah samyogas sa trikaḥ by Dalhaņa. The junction of the collar-bone with the neck cannot be called trika.
6 Caraka counts fifteen bones in the neck. According to modern anatomists there are, however, only seven. He probably counted the transverse processes
