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ROUTLEDGE CRITICAL STUDIES
IN BUDDHISM
Founding Editors:
Charles S. Prebish and Damien Keown
Routledge Critical Studies in Buddhism is a comprehensive study of the Bud-
dhist tradition. The Series explores this complex and extensive tradition from a
variety of perspectives, using a range of different methodologies.
The Series is diverse in its focus, including historical studies, textual transla-
tions and commentaries, sociological investigations, bibliographic studies, and
considerations of religious practice as an expression of Buddhism’s integral reli-
giosity. It also presents materials on modern intellectual historical studies,
including the role of Buddhist thought and scholarship in a contemporary, crit-
ical context and in the light of current social issues. The Series is expansive and
imaginative in scope, spanning more than two and a half millennia of Buddhist
history. It is receptive to all research works that inform and advance our know-
ledge and understanding of the Buddhist tradition.
A SURVEY OF VINAYA AMERICAN BUDDHISM
LITERATURE Edited by Duncan Ryuken Williams
Charles S. Prebish and Christopher Queen
THE REFLEXIVE NATURE OF IMAGING WISDOM
AWARENESS Jacob N. Kinnard
Paul Williams PAIN AND ITS ENDING
ALTRUISM AND REALITY Carol S. Anderson
Paul Williams EMPTINESS APPRAISED
BUDDHISM AND HUMAN David F. Burton
RIGHTS
THE SOUND OF LIBERATING
Edited by Damien Keown, Charles
TRUTH
Prebish and Wayne Husted
Edited by Sallie B. King and Paul O.
WOMEN IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF Ingram
THE BUDDHA BUDDHIST THEOLOGY
Kathryn R. Blackstone Edited by Roger R. Jackson and John
THE RESONANCE OF EMPTINESS J. Makransky
Gay Watson
THE GLORIOUS DEEDS OF ACTION DHARMA
PURNA Edited by Christopher Queen, Charles
Joel Tatelman Prebish and Damien Keown
EARLY BUDDHISM – A NEW TIBETAN AND ZEN BUDDHISM
APPROACH IN BRITAIN
Sue Hamilton David N. Kay
CONTEMPORARY BUDDHIST THE CONCEPT OF THE BUDDHA
ETHICS Guang Xing
Edited by Damien Keown
THE PHILOSOPHY OF DESIRE IN
INNOVATIVE BUDDHIST THE BUDDHIST PALI CANON
WOMEN David Webster
Edited by Karma Lekshe Tsomo
THE NOTION OF DITTHI IN
TEACHING BUDDHISM IN THE THERAVADA BUDDHISM
WEST Paul Fuller
Edited by V. S. Hori, R. P. Hayes and
THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF
J. M. Shields
SELF-COGNITION
EMPTY VISION Zhihua Yao
David L. McMahan
MORAL THEORY IN
SELF, REALITY AND REASON IN SANTIDEVA’S
TIBETAN PHILOSOPHY SIKSAMUCCAYA
Thupten Jinpa Barbra R. Clayton
IN DEFENSE OF DHARMA BUDDHIST STUDIES FROM
Tessa J. Bartholomeusz INDIA TO AMERICA
BUDDHIST PHENOMENOLOGY Edited by Damien Keown
Dan Lusthaus DISCOURSE AND IDEOLOGY IN
RELIGIOUS MOTIVATION AND MEDIEVAL JAPANESE
THE ORIGINS OF BUDDHISM BUDDHISM
Torkel Brekke Edited by Richard K. Payne and
Taigen Dan Leighton
DEVELOPMENTS IN
AUSTRALIAN BUDDHISM BUDDHIST THOUGHT AND
Michelle Spuler APPLIED PSYCHOLOGICAL
RESEARCH
ZEN WAR STORIES Edited by D. K. Nauriyal, Michael S.
Brian Victoria Drummond and Y. B. Lal
THE BUDDHIST UNCONSCIOUS BUDDHISM IN CANADA
William S. Waldron Edited by Bruce Matthews
INDIAN BUDDHIST THEORIES OF
PERSONS
James Duerlinger
BUDDHISM, CONFLICT AND BUDDHIST RITUALS OF DEATH
VIOLENCE IN MODERN AND REBIRTH
SRI LANKA Contemporary Sri Lankan practice
Edited by Mahinda Deegalle and its origins
Rita Langer
THERAVADA BUDDHISM AND
THE BRITISH ENCOUNTER BUDDHISM, POWER AND
Religious, missionary and colonial POLITICAL ORDER
experience in nineteenth century Edited by Ian Harris
Sri Lanka ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS IN
Elizabeth Harris BUDDHISM
BEYOND ENLIGHTENMENT A virtues approach
Buddhism, religion, modernity Pragati Sahni
Richard Cohen THE CULTURAL PRACTICES OF
BUDDHISM IN THE PUBLIC MODERN CHINESE
SPHERE BUDDHISM
Reorienting global interdependence Attuning the Dharma
Peter D. Hershock Francesca Tarocco
BRITISH BUDDHISM MINDFULNESS IN EARLY
Teachings, practice and development BUDDHISM
Robert Bluck New approaches through psychology
and textual analysis of Pali,
BUDDHIST NUNS IN TAIWAN
Chinese and Sanskrit sources
AND SRI LANKA
Tse-fu Kuan
A critique of the feminist perspective
Wei-Yi Cheng RELIGION, MEDICINE AND THE
HUMAN EMBRYO IN TIBET
NEW BUDDHIST MOVEMENTS IN
Frances Garrett
THAILAND
Toward an understanding of Wat Phra
Dhammakåya and Santi Asoke
Rory Mackenzie
The following titles are published in association with the Oxford Centre for
Buddhist Studies
The Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies conducts and promotes rigorous
teaching and research into all forms of the Buddhist tradition.
EARLY BUDDHIST METAPHYSICS
Noa Ronkin
MIPHAM’S DIALECTICS AND THE DEBATES ON EMPTINESS
Karma Phuntsho
HOW BUDDHISM BEGAN
The conditioned genesis of the early teachings
Richard F. Gombrich
BUDDHIST MEDITATION
An anthology of texts from the Pali Canon
Sarah Shaw
REMAKING BUDDHISM FOR MEDIEVAL NEPAL
The fifteenth-century reformation of Newar Buddhism
Will Tuladhar-Douglas
METAPHOR AND LITERALISM IN BUDDHISM
The doctrinal history of Nirvana
Soonil Hwang
THE BIOGRAPHIES OF RECHUNGPA
The evolution of a Tibetan hagiography
Peter Alan Roberts
THE ORIGIN OF BUDDHIST MEDITATION
Alexander Wynne
RELIGION, MEDICINE
AND THE HUMAN
EMBRYO IN TIBET
Frances Garrett
First published 2008
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2008 Frances Garrett
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any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Garrett, Frances Mary.
Religion, Medicine and the Human Embryo in Tibet/Frances Garrett.
p. cm. – (Routledge critical studies in Buddhism)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Medicine–Religious aspects–Buddhism. 2. Embryology,
Human–Religious aspects–Buddhism. 3. Embryology,
Human–China–Tibet. 4. Buddhism–China–Tibet. I. Title.
BQ4570.M7G37 2008
294.3661–dc22
2007046155
ISBN10: 0-415-44115-3 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0-203-92742-7 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-44115-5 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-92742-7 (ebk)
ISBN 0-203-92742-7 Master e-book ISBN
FOR MY PARENTS
CONTENTS
List of figures xiii
List of tables xiv
Acknowledgments xv
1 Becoming human in Tibetan literature 1
Medicine, science and religion in European thought 2
Models of comparison: science and religion, science and
Buddhism 4
Narratives of embryology 8
Caveats and approaches 12
Medical epistemology and the embryological narrative 13
Narrative, identity and history 17
2 Theories of human development 20
Indian medical sources for human development 23
Early human development in Indian Nikaya and Mahayana
Buddhism 26
Practicing gestation in Indian Vajrayana Buddhism 31
Chinese traditions of “nurturing the fetus” 33
Cultural inheritance and adaptation 35
3 Interactions between medicine and religion in Tibet 37
Eurasian cosmopolitanism versus Indian Buddhism: a
historiographical conflict 37
Linking medical history with Buddhism 41
Striking the path: organizing the influx of Indian culture 42
The heyday of medical scholasticism 47
xi
CONTENTS
Locating human development in the narrative of Tibetan
history 53
4 The fetal body, gender and the normal 57
Functional physiologies: humoral and digestive systems 60
The circulatory system 64
Characterizing embodiment: gendered, defective and “normal”
bodies 71
Female physiology 76
Encountering the narrative’s central subject 84
5 Gestation and the religious path 85
Conception and debates over the sequence of fetal
development 88
Fetal development in tantric sources 96
The fetal experience of conception, gestation and birth 102
Practicing the exoteric path 106
Esoteric practices for closing the womb’s door 109
Purifying death, the intermediate state and rebirth 112
The embryologic vision of reality 117
Inconsistency, ignorance, or innovation? 121
6 Growth, change and continuity 127
Karma and the Buddhist problem of causality 128
Causality, the individual, and the cosmos 130
The power of karma in the context of conception and
development 136
The shaky foundations of karma’s role in becoming human 140
The role of the elements in causing growth 142
Attributing causality to winds 146
Growth caused by the power of gnosis 148
The forces of creation 150
Epilogue: historiography recapitulates embryology 155
Notes 164
Appendix 188
Bibliography 191
Index 205
xii
FIGURES
1.1 The seventeenth-century painting depicts the moment of
conception 8
4.1 The medical painting explains that conception on odd days will
bring about a boy, and conception on even days, a girl 72
4.2 The Four Tantras tradition also states that the child will be a boy
if the woman’s belly is heavy on the right side and a girl if she is
heavy on the left side 74
4.3 A woman gives birth 81
5.1 In the twenty-second week of gestation, the nine orifices open 88
5.2 During the thirty-sixth week, the fetus feels unhappy 103
6.1 The painting shows the influence of the natural elements on the
growth of the fetus 135
6.2 A series of images depict male and female reproductive substances
with various sorts of defects 141
xiii
TABLES
5.1 The use of terminology in early gestation 93
5.2 Development of the gross body 94
5.3 Development of circulatory channels 95
5.4 Comparison of tantric stages of gestation 101
5.5 Development of the mind/mental sensations over the course
of gestation 105
6.1 The names of the winds responsible for fetal development
during each week of gestation 145
xiv
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For generously sharing their scholarly expertise in the course of writing this
book, I am grateful to Ngawang Jinpa and Jampa in Darjeeling, Dorjé Dramdül
in Sarnath, and Yangga Trarong, Dawa, and Jampa Trinlé in Lhasa. In the U.S.,
I deeply appreciate the substantial advice of Paul Groner, Jeffrey Hopkins, Anne
Kinney, Karen Lang, Anne Monius and Ann Gill Taylor. I am especially grate-
ful to David Germano for many years of support and kindness. This book has
benefitted also from suggestions by Janet Gyatso, Dan Martin, Robert Kritzer,
Dominik Wujastyk, Charles Burnett, Jonathan Silk, John Kloppenborg, Amy
Langenberg and several anonymous reviewers. The largest debts of gratitude are
owed to my parents, for their unfailing generosity, to Travis, for his affection,
and to Sivert, for getting me interested in embryos in the first place.
I would also like to acknowledge Fulbright-Hays, the U.S. National Institutes
for Health, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Weedon Foundation for
supporting me in my research and writing, as well as the University of Vir-
ginia’s Center for South Asian Studies, its Center for the Study of Complement-
ary and Alternative Therapies, and its Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library.
The assistance of the Tibetan Academy of Social Sciences faciliated productive
research time in Tibet.
The following editors and publishers have allowed me to use extracts of my
writing from their publications in this book:
“Embodiment and Embryology in Tibetan Literature,” in Soundings in Tibetan
Medicine: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Mona Schrempf,
Leiden: Brill Publishers, 2007, 411–426.
“The Three Channels in Tibetan Medical and Religious Texts, including a trans-
lation of Tsultrim Gyaltsen’s ‘Treatise on the Three Channels in Tibetan Medi-
cine’,” with Vincanne Adams, in Traditional South Asian Medicine,
forthcoming in 2008.
“Ordering human growth in Tibetan medical and religious embryologies,” in
Textual Healing: Essays on Medieval and Early Modern Medicine, ed. Elizabeth
Furdell, Leiden: Brill Publishers, 2005, 31–52.
xv
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Illustrations of the Tibetan medical paintings on embryology are printed here
from images held by the Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library, made available
under the THDL Public License. These photographs reproduce the collection of
paintings held at the Museum of Medical History at the Traditional Medicine
Factory on Nyangré Road in Lhasa. An entire set of medical paintings (slightly
different in detail than those presented here) are beautifully reproduced in
Gyurme Dorje and Fernand Meyer, eds. Tibetan Medical Paintings: Illustrations
to the “Blue Beryl” Treatise of Sangye Gyamtso (1653–1705), 2 vols, New
York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers, 1992.
Tibetan transcription and transliteration
This book uses the system of phonetic transcription of Tibetan words that is
described at the Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library’s “THDL Simplified
Phonetic Transcription of Standard Tibetan,” by David Germano and Nicolas
Tournadre (2003), available at http://www.thdl.org/xml/showEssay.php?
xml=/collections/langling/THDL_phonetics.xml. At the end of this book, a
guide to transliteration of Tibetan provides the exact spelling for each phoneti-
cized term. In the body of the book, when Tibetan and Sanskrit terms are pro-
vided in parentheses, the Tibetan term will always be provided first, followed by
the Sanskrit term; Sanskrit terms are preceded by the abbreviation “Skt.”
xvi
