On Sat, Aug 6, 2011 at 6:05 PM, Stefan Baums <baums@berkeley.edu> wrote:

Dear Elisa,

thanks for explaining and for the reference!

> I cannot really understand what you mean by "since yoni here
> serves as the cover term they were evidently not meant to be
> covered"

In the Buddhist sources (e.g., Saṅgītisūtra and commentaries,
AKBh), yoni is not a synonym of the jarāyu kind of birth, but all
four items are considered ‘yonis’ in a more general meaning of
‘kind of birth.’ This generalization of the term for a generative
organ from the animal (and human) kingdom suggests that plants
were not a concern of the creators of this variant of the list.

All best,
Stefan

--
Dr. Stefan Baums
South and Southeast Asian Studies, UC Berkeley
School of Asian Studies, Universiteit Leiden