ABSTRACT
The Garbhavakranti-sutra makes use of the thrust and energy of story-telling, selecting from a range of available plot elements and making certain narrative choices in order to tell a particularly true-feeling story about gender and other types of social identity. In the Garbhavakranti, as in other jatakas and avadanas, past actions are transformed via the mechanism of karma into present life situations, which are themselves calibrated according to set hierarchies of social position, spiritual attainment, and gender. In fact the Garbhavakranti is related to an extensive premodern South Asian tradition of narrating the fetal lives and births of great religious heroes such as Mahavira, Krsna, and of course, the Buddha. Susanne Mrozik calls the Buddhist notion that virtue is expressed through embodiment "physiomorality". The Indian Buddhist tradition recognized the special understanding to be gained from "making sense" of birth through narrative.
