Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India: Osteology or the Bones of the Human Body

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Ayurveda the traditional medicine of India has been prevalent in this region since time immemorial. It contains the summum bonum of knowledge regard- ing diseases and their cures. It is now being adopted and recognised all over the world and more and more people are beginning to realise its worth. It is so complete and comprehensive a science in itself that it is often regarded as the. Fifth Veda.

Hoemle took keen interest in the study of several indological subject His work on the Bower manuscript was of great importance. It was during this period of research that he came across some very useful ancient literature on Ayurveda the original of which was not available. He became interested in this field and composed the present work in 1907 on the basis of extant works.

Hoemle's work on osteology or the bones of the human body should be studied keeping inview the fact that knowledge of surgery declined and gradually disappeared among ayurveda practitioners following the death of Lord Budha as a result of a surgical opera- tion. Surgery came to be considered as a form of violence against humanity which was thus discarded and even prohibited.

Hoemle has taken great pains to critical- ly scrutinise information from classics then available The scholarship of the author is evident on every page of this monumental work.

HOERNLE was born in 1841 of mission- ary parents in Sekundra near Agra.

He was educated at Stuttgart, Basel and London where he studied Sanskrit with T. Goldstuecker. He returned to India in 1865 and remained there until 1899 during which time he was Professor of Philosophy at Jai Narain's College in Benaras and later principal of the Catherdral Mission College, Calcutta, From 1881-99 he was Principal of the Madrasa in Calcutta. He died in Oxford in 1918.

His deep and abiding interest in Indological studies and in particular in ancient medical texts is evinced by his several publications, the most important of which was the Bower Manuscript.

Dr. Hoemle's Critical Study of Osteology or the Bones of the Human Body is a classic of its kind based upon ancient Indian medical texts fully documented, with an Index and English translations of the original Sanskrit. This volume is also profusely illustrated by the author's son with excellent anatomical sketches.

This unique work is now presented in this new edition with an excellent Introduction by Vaidya Bhagwan Dash, himself a well-known scholar and practitioner of Ayurveda.

OUR knowledge of the Medicine known to the ancient Indians is at present extremely limited. I was made pain- fully aware of this fact in the course of preparing my edition of the two old Indian medical tracts preserved in the well- known Bower Manuscript of the fifth century A.D. The exigencies of that edition led me to a closer study of Indian Medicine, and the present treatise on its osteological doctrines is one of the firstfruits of that study.

Probably it will come as a surprise to many, as it did to myself, to discover the amount of anatomical knowledge which is disclosed in the works of the earliest medical writers of India. Its extent and accuracy are surprising, when we allow for their early age-probably the sixth century before Christ- and their peculiar methods of definition. In these circumstances the interesting question of the relation of the Medicine of the Indians to that of the Greeks naturally suggests itself. The possibility, at least, of a dependence of either on the other cannot well be denied, when we know as an historical fact that two Greek physicians, Ktesias, about 400 B. C., and Megasthenes about 300 B.C., visited, or resided in Northern India.

No satisfactory knowledge of human anatomy can be attained without recourse to human dissection. Of the practice of such dissection in ancient India we have direct proof in the medical compendium of Suśruta, and it is indirectly confirmed by the statements of Charaka. It is worthy of note, however, that in the writings of neither of these two oldest Indian medical writers is there any indi- cation of the practice of animal dissection.'

August Rudolf Friedrich Hoernle was born on 19.10.1841 in Sekundra near Agra, where his father Rev. T.C. Hoernle was a missionary. He was sent to Germany when he was seven years old and attended school in Stuttgart. He began his university studies in Basel and went to London in 1860 to study Sanskrit with T. Goldstuecker. He returned to India in 1865 and remained there till 1899. He became professor of philosophy in Jai Narain's College in Benares and was appointed principal of the Cathedral Mission College in Calcutta in 1877. From 1881-99 he was principal of the Madrasa in Calcutta. Hoernle continued his Indological studies after his return to England in 1900. He had been a member of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta and was its vice-president for some years. He died on 12.11.1918 in Oxford.

Hoernle took keen interest in the study of many Indological subjects. His work on the Bower manuscript was of great importance. This manuscript was named after its finder, Lieutenant H. Bower, who had found it in 1890 in an old stupa near Kaschgar in Central Asia. For palacographical reasons this manuscript is ascribed to the 4th century A.D. and it comprises several medical texts. One of the texts des- cribes different medicines and their ingredients, ointments for the eyes, and discusses garlic, which is said to increase man's life-span by one hundred years. The second text has prescriptions for 14 recipes to be used externally and internally. The longest text is called Navanitaka and has extracts from older medical text-books. All texts are metrical, the language is a mixture of Prakrit and Sanskrit. Hoernle published these texts under the title The Bower Manuscript, Facsimile Leaves, Nagari Transcription, Romanised Transliteration and English translation with notes, Calcutta 1893-1912.

**Contents and Sample Pages**