Paper short abstract:

Sanshō ruijūshō (1318), an encyclopedia on childbirth based on Chinese translations of Indian Buddhist sutras, describes pregnancy as 38 weeks. I ask how early Indian embryological knowledge, pejorative toward women's bodies, was adapted by esoteric monks for pregnant noble women in medieval Japan.

Paper long abstract:

In principle, ordained Buddhist monks were not supposed to touch women; the Vinaya regulations for male monks guarded strongly against physical contact with laywomen and nuns. And yet, in medieval Japan, Buddhists had a keen (if detached) interest in the inner workings of women's bodies. Recent research shows a little-studied tradition of compiling handbooks on childbirth and women's health by Japanese Tendai and Shingon scholar-monks. Focusing on Sanshō ruijūshō (Encyclopedia of Childbirth, ca. 1318) from Kanazawa Bunko, this paper will trace the adoption of Indian and Chinese embryological knowledge and its reconfiguration in medieval Japan, focusing specifically on the thirty-eight-week gestation model. This model was present in Japan since at least the late ninth century, when it appeared in Japan's earliest handbook for noble women, Gushi nintai sanshō himitsu hōshū (Secret Methods for Conception, Pregnancy, and Childbirth) attributed to the Tendai monk Annen (840?-880?). This pattern, deriving from Sui- and Tang-dynasty Chinese translations of Indian Buddhist treatises, was adopted by the Japanese esoteric temple milieu for the benefit of noble women from aristocratic families, who could potentially become imperial or shogunal wives and consorts. This paper will argue that the Buddhists' logic for promoting this particular model was its particular level of detail, which superseded the medical ten-month gestation model seen in Tanba Yasuyori's Ishinpō (984). However, in order to be acceptable to the Japanese nobility, especially its high-ranking women, the original sutra passages containing pejorative rhetoric toward women's bodies had to be toned down by Japanese medieval scholar-monks. Thus, the rendition of the thirty-eight-week gestation model seen in the Sanshō ruijūshō differed considerably from its original source, the Mahāratnakuta sutra and its Chinese translation of the earliest Buddhist embryological text, the Garbhāvakrānti sutra (Sutra of Entry into the Womb, late third century).