ABSTRACT
Sakyamuni's extraordinary conception, gestation, and birth contrast strongly with the fetal tale narrated in the Garbhavakranti-sutra, a contrast that illuminates aesthetic and symbolic choices made by Buddhist authors in describing the processes of gestation and birth. While the suppurating mother of the Garbhavakranti-sutra may be "abject" according to the theoretical constructs of Western disgust theory, in South Asian terms, she is more likely to be regarded as inauspicious and impure. The Garbhavakranti-sutra includes imagery and plot elements that remove the possibility that birth can ever be considered an auspicious event. Buddhist monuments were protected by auspicious salabhanjikas, however, and from a very early period. The worldview that attends a monastic posture towards the violence and sexuality necessary for full social involvement is imaginatively explored in Buddhist birth "myths". Maurice Bloch recognizes the expression of the rebounding violence idiom in at least some non-ritual cultural forms.
