I would like to sincerely thank everyone who responded to my question, both on- and off-list. I am deeply grateful to you all: in less than 24 hours, I received 25 suggestions – I am amazed by our group’s capacity for cooperation and mutual enrichment.

Reading your replies, I realised that this topic can take on a scope I hadn’t considered, as it borders on and, at times, overlaps with related topics, such as androgyny, the male body as the normative body, the concept of āśrayaparivṛtti/parāvṛtti, normative literature (Kāmasūtra and Kāmaśāstras), Buddhist literature in Pāli, genderbending/emasculating rituals in Vedic texts – to mention just a few. Perhaps a dear friend is right who, off-list, writes to me that the topic deserves a panel at a conference or, perhaps, an entire conference...

Il giorno 13 mar 2026, alle ore 21:46, Marco Franceschini <marco.franceschini3@gmail.com> ha scritto:

Dear friends and colleagues,

one of my students is writing her undergraduate thesis on the theme of gender change in pre-modern Sanskrit literature.
So far, we have identified the following cases:
- Ila/Sudyumna-Ilā (Rāmāyaṇa, Bhāgavatapurāṇa, Viṣṇupurāṇa, Vāyupurāṇa)
- Bhaṅgāsvana (Mahābhārata)
- Śikhaṇḍin (Mahābhārata)
- Mūladeva (Vetālapañcaviṃśati)
- Rūpāvatī (Divyāvadāna)
- Arjuna (Mahābhārata)

As for studies on the subject, we have been able to identify only these three:
- M. Bloomfield, On the Art of Entering Another's Body: A Hindu Fiction Motif
- N. Brown, Change of Sex as a Hindu Story Motif
- R. Goldman, Transsexualism, Gender, and Anxiety in Traditional India

I would be grateful for any additional suggestions you might wish to provide.

Thank you in advance for your suggestions.
Best wishes,

Marco
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Marco Franceschini
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Associate Professor
University of Bologna
Department of History and Cultures
Personal web page
Academia web page
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