Juno Vortex

Look at the wall in the attached photo. Among these Tamil inscriptions is the budget for a hospital that existed in Chola India nearly a 1,000 years ago. We know how many patients it could take. We know the doctor's name. We even know what was set aside for lighting the hospital at night. This is the Venkatesa Perumal temple at Tirumukkudal, near Kanchipuram. In the 11th century, the temple shared its premises with a Vedic college, a hostel and a hospital called Virasolan. K. V. Subrahmanya Ayyar, an Indian epigraphist, discovered and copied the inscription during his 1915-16 field season. The writing covered about 540 square feet. In one section, the lines ran for 55 feet. The hospital had 15 beds. Its physician, Kodandaraman Asvatthama-Bhattan of Alappakkam, prescribed medicines for the in-patients, the college's teachers and students, and people attached to the temple institutions. Someone who performed surgical operations was paid separately. There were 2 people to collect medicinal herbs. They also supplied firewood and helped prepare medicines. 2 nurses looked after the patients and gave them medicines. A barber was paid too. Rice for the 15 in-patients had its own allocation. The pharmacy had an annual stock list. Oils and medicated ghees were measured out. 4 preparations were listed at 2,000 units each. 40 kasu, a unit of money, was provided for the medicines and preparation requirements. The account even mentions ghee to be kept underground for an aged ghee preparation. I find this much more interesting than a general claim that our ancestors practised medicine. Here we can read the arrangements for a particular hospital, with a named physician, staff duties and quantities to be supplied. And somebody had included the night lamp in that budget. Oil was to be bought for it to burn through the night, for a year counted as 360 days. Source: K. V. Subrahmanya Ayyar, "The Tirumukkudal Inscription of Virarajendra", Epigraphia Indica, Vol. XXI, No. 38, pp. 220, 223-225, 249-250. Image Source: R. Muthusamy, Know Your Heritage, Tirumukkudal field-trip photographs, 2014; Epigraphia Indica, Vol. XXI, pp. 249-250 (yellow highlights added). Photo 1: The actual inscribed wall and temple at Tirumukkudal. Photos: R. Muthusamy / Know Your Heritage. Photo 2: Original report, with the evidence highlighted: hospital staffing and patients; medicine inventory and night lamp; Ayyar's own account of copying the inscription in 1915-16. Photo 3: Hospital staffing and care: the inscription provides for 15 in-patients, a physician, a surgical practitioner, herb collectors and two nurses who administered medicines. Epigraphia Indica, Vol. XXI, p. 249. Photo 4: The hospital's annual pharmacy inventory: measured oils and medicated ghees, four preparations stocked at 2,000 units each, and oil for a lamp to burn through the night. Epigraphia Indica, Vol. XXI, p. 250.

How do you investigate a stone drilled tooth from 1,000s of years ago? In this case, part of the answer lay in a study of bead-makers in Gujarat. Researchers examining ancient teeth from Mehrgarh drew on research into stone bead-making in Khambhat to reconstruct how a flint-tipped drill could cut human enamel. The teeth themselves came from Mehrgarh (present-day Balochistan). In 2006, the team reported 11 drilled molars from 9 adults in a cemetery dating ~7,500-9,000 years ago. These were not the easy to reach front teeth. Every drilled tooth was a 1st / 2nd permanent molar. The holes measured 1.3-3.2 millimetres across, with depths reaching 3.5 millimetres. Under magnification, some cavity walls still showed concentric ridges left by the drill. But the important clue was around the edges. Later chewing had smoothed them. The drilling had happened in living mouths, and the teeth had stayed in use afterwards. The photograph shows one of them: specimen MR3 177, a lower right 2nd molar, beside an electron-microscope view of its drilled cavity. To test how such holes could be made, the researchers reconstructed a bow drill fitted with a flint head. Their method drew on ethnographic research into Khambhat's bead-making craft, published in 1991. In the experiment, the drill produced similar holes in human enamel in less than a minute. This was a modern reconstruction on detached teeth, not a measured treatment time for the ancient patients. Mehrgarh had bead makers of its own. Flint drill heads occur there alongside beads made from shell, turquoise, lapis lazuli and carnelian. The team proposed that people skilled at drilling beads had transferred that knowledge to teeth. The Gujarat connection is in the investigation: a study of Indian craft helped researchers reconstruct a possible technique. It does not establish where tooth drilling began / prove an unbroken dental tradition. Why the ancient drillers did it is harder to settle. 4 teeth showed decay associated with the holes, suggesting that some interventions may have been attempts at treatment or relief. But that does not explain every case. No filling material survives to confirm what, if anything, was put inside. We do not know how pain was managed. 1 person had three teeth drilled. Another had a single tooth drilled twice. Sources: A. Coppa et al., "Early Neolithic tradition of dentistry," Nature 440, pp. 755-756, 6 April 2006; supplementary methods, Table 1 and figures. J.M. Kenoyer, M. Vidale and K.K. Bhan, "Contemporary stone beadmaking in Khambhat, India: Patterns of craft specialization and organization of production as reflected in the archaeological record," World Archaeology 23, pp. 44-63, 1991. Image Source: Coppa et al., Nature (2006), supplementary Figure 1, specimen MR3 177. Experimental drill photograph: Luca Bondioli / Nature via AP. Photo 1: Actual Mehrgarh tooth MR3 177, with its drilled cavity under an electron microscope. Use this as the lead image. Photo 2: Modern experimental reconstruction with a flint-tipped drill. Not an excavated drill or a photograph of an ancient procedure. Photo 3: The original Nature page, with the counts, chewing wear, drill experiment and uncertainty about purpose highlighted.

I do not post about follower counts. But I noticed 40,000 here this morning, on Sharad Purnima, and wanted to say thank you. A small Moon story to mark the day. Astronomers in Kerala used a set of 248 short Sanskrit sentences called the Candravakyas / "Moon sentences". Through the katapayadi system, their letters encoded numbers: a table of the Moon's longitude, stored in words you could memorise. These covered a cycle of ~248 days. With the right day-count and corrections, an astronomer could use the sentences to calculate the Moon's position. The words you recited were also the data you needed. Tradition credits them to Vararuci. Their precise age is uncertain, but they are documented in medieval astronomical works and were used by generations of Kerala astronomers. Something to think about when we look at the Moon tonight. Thank you for reading, sharing, asking questions and adding things I didn't know. These conversations have made being here special. Wishing you and your families a blessed Sharad Purnima 🙏 Sources: Venketeswara Pai, Indian Journal of History of Science 60(2), 2025; Vakyakarana, ed. T.S. Kuppanna Sastri and K.V. Sarma, 1962, Appendix II.