The eight surgical acts and the instruments

Like the eight kinds of karma of all embodied beings, surgery has eight acts: excision, incision, scraping, puncturing, probing, extraction, draining and suturing, done with suitable instruments by those who know the rules; the heron-beak instrument (kankavaktra) is named for extracting foreign bodies. An editorial note defines shalya, and footnotes on PDF 320-321 define each act and the terms shastra and yantra.