FW: [INDOLOGY] Prenatal suffering [Was: A Query re the development of garbha]

[Jo]

Dear Paolo,

 

What a horrible view of female anatomy. Thanks a lot for the details. You are correct to note that these yoniyantra atrocities stand as opposites to the Freudian views of fetal womb bliss. However, some of the analysts also devised treatments to enable people to recover from what they called, “birth trauma”, experienced at exit from the womb. It was called, “primal scream” therapy.

 

No surprise about the Shaivite ideas of gestation and birth. 

On to east Asia: have you ever seen this one, the menstruation sutra (attached)? 

Then the Chinese also have tales about the blood pond in Hell, where women who died in childbirth end up.

> From my comments on another list:

 

My Comment: 

Finally--research and reports on a topic long neglected and one that has bothered my sensibilities for some time: the “female blood libel” (my construction) in east Asia,  in Buddhism,  but not limited to it. Buddhism in east Asia absorbed folk ideas and practices about women's bleeding (menstruation and childbirth), generated to ensure patriarchal values of human fertility ueber alles. It wasn’t difficult for these values to be added to Buddhist notions of spiritual/moral purity, qua shed blood polluting bhu, or earth.  (Also, women who die in childbirth are guilty of murdering their children.)

 

A recent publication:

Escape from Blood Pond Hell: The Tales of Mulian and Woman Huang by Beata Grant and Wilt L. Idema (translators). Univ. of Washington Press, 2011.

Check out the vernacular cover illustration (amazon.com.) of women in the blood pond hell.

 

Blurb: These translations of The Precious Scroll of the Three Lives of Mulian and Woman Huang Recites the Diamond Sutra are late-nineteenth-century examples of baojuan (literally, "precious scrolls"), a Chinese folk genre featuring alternating verse and prose that was used by monks to illustrate religious precepts for lay listeners. They represent only two of numerous versions of these legends, composed in a variety of genres, which were once popular all over China. While the seeds of the Mulian legend, in which a man rescues his mother from hell, can be found in Indian Buddhist texts, the story of Woman Huang, who seeks her own salvation, appears to be indigenous to China. 

With their graphic portrayals of the underworld; dramatization of Buddhist beliefs about death, salvation, and rebirth; and frank discussion of women's responsibility for sin, these texts provide detailed and powerful descriptions of popular religious beliefs and practices in late imperial China, especially as they relate to women.

 

Best wishes

Joanna

 



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