Life in the Womb: Conception and Gestation in Buddhist Scripture and Classical Indian Medical Literature

Abstract

The first Noble Truth of Buddhism asserts that all is suffering. In this context, the word “all” means all conditioned things, that is to say, all worldly things. Hence anything that perpetuates the cycle of rebirth in this world can be considered antithetical to liberation and subject to condemnation. A number of Buddhist sūtras, meditation manuals, and doctrinal texts, probably written before the third century, describe in various degrees of completeness the stages between one lifetime and the next. Th e process of rebirth begins at the moment of death in one life, continues through the intermediate existence or antarābhava, the moment of conception, and the period of gestation, and culminates in the moment of birth in the next life. Among the Buddhist texts that take up the topic, the Garbhāvā krāntisūtra presents the most detailed description of conception and gestation. Little has been written about this fascinating sūtra. In this chapter, I compare its accounts of the crucial moment of conception and the period of gestation with accounts in Indian medical literature, particularly the Carakasam. hitā. On the one hand, there are many similarities, which may be the result of mutual infl uence between the Buddhist sūtra and the medical texts as well as possible borrowing from a now-lost common source. On the other hand, there are also considerable diff erences, which can be explained at least in part by the fact that the sūtra and the medical texts have diff erent purposes.