Meulenbeld in his 1999 book states that the "Suśruta-saṃhitā" is likely a work that includes several historical layers, whose composition may have begun in the last centuries BCE and was completed in its presently surviving form by another author who redacted its first five sections and added the long, final section, the "Uttaratantra." It is likely that the "Suśruta-saṃhitā" was known to the scholar Dṛḍhabala (fl. 300-500 CE, also spelled "Dridhabala"), which gives the latest date for the version of the work that has survived into the modern era.