Introduction

i.1In the context of relating the Buddha’s efforts to lead his half-brother Nanda away from infatuation with carnal desire generally, and his beautiful wife in particular, and onto the path of awakening‍—even going so far as to miraculously transport him to other realms‍—The Teaching to the Venerable Nanda on Dwelling in the Womb famously describes the thirty-eight weeks of human gestation. Though the details vary somewhat, all versions of the sūtra discuss conception, the composition of the embryo, the gestation period, the newborn being, the course of life and its sufferings, and the need to practice for one’s own good and the good of others. The present version, in addition to the narrative frame of the story of Nanda, includes at the end several stories of Nanda’s past lives. Among these is a description of what actions bore fruit in Nanda’s last life, in which he was golden in complexion, possessed thirty of the thirty-two marks of a great being, was only four finger-widths shorter than the Buddha, and became renowned as the disciple most adept at controlling the senses.

i.2The section on conception is notable for its descriptions of a number of defects of the womb that prevent the mother from conceiving. In this section, the antarābhava (the being in the state between death in one life and birth in the next) is said to have deluded thoughts about the womb that it is entering. If the antarābhava’s karma is good, it thinks it is entering, for example, a celestial palace. If the antarābhava has bad karma, it imagines that it is entering an unpleasant place, like a hole in a wall.

i.3The section on the composition of the embryo consists mainly of similes showing that the embryo is not simply a combination of the father’s semen and the mother’s blood. Rather, a collection of causes and conditions is required for rebirth to occur.

i.4The week-by-week account of the development of the embryo and fetus is the longest section of the sūtra. In each week, new features, frequently initiated by exotically named internal winds, are described. The account of the thirty-eighth week describes the miscarriage of a fetus that has accumulated bad karma, a fate avoided by a being whose karma is good.

i.5The infant experiences great suffering as it emerges from the womb and is washed for the first time. Shortly after birth, it is infested by eighty thousand types of “worm” (Skt. krimi, kṛmi; Tib. srin bu) that feed on various parts of its body, several dozen of which are named. There are multiple references in other texts in the Kangyur to the worms that are thought to infest and feed on the human body. There are detailed accounts like the one found in the present text in The Application of Mindfulness of the Sacred Dharma (Saddharma­smṛty­upasthāna) and The Sections of Dharma (Dharmaskandha), as well as passing references to these worms in, for example, all of the long Perfection of Wisdom sūtras, such as The Transcendent Perfection of Wisdom in Ten Thousand Lines (Daśasāhasrikā­prajñā­pāramitā), which specifically refers to the 80,000 types of worm, and in The Play in Full (Lalitavistara) and The Inquiry of Lokadhara (Lokadhara­pari­pṛcchā).

i.6Over the course of his or her life, the person is afflicted by various illnesses and is subject to punishments including imprisonment, beatings, and mutilations, as well as torments by supernatural beings, bad weather, hunger, and thirst.

i.7Thus, the sūtra emphasizes the suffering involved in gestation and birth and throughout life, and it discourages activity that leads to rebirth. At the same time, it presents early Indian Buddhist understandings of embryology, and it was one of the main sources for embryology in Tibetan medicine.

i.8Except for several brief quotations in Abhidharma texts and the Yogācārabhūmi attributed to Asaṅga, the original Sanskrit text is not extant. The text has survived in three different translations in Chinese and in three Tibetan translations. Two of the Tibetan translations were made from the Chinese, and one was made from the Sanskrit. In terms of their content, these six surviving Chinese and Tibetan versions fall into two main groups: the shorter versions that consist of the Buddha’s teaching to his younger half-brother Nanda on the subject of conception, gestation, and childbirth, and the longer versions that also provide a frame narrative explaining that the teaching was given because Nanda, infatuated with his wife, had been reluctant to take monk’s vows and needed to be convinced by the Buddha. After the concluding verses, there is an account of Nanda’s past lives, which explains how Nanda was fortunate enough to have been delivered from saṃsāra and established in nirvāṇa. In the body of the sūtra in its longer versions, there is much added material not specifically related to conception, gestation, or childbirth, and there is also more detail about conception and the antarābhava than in the shorter versions. The present translation is of one of the longer versions.

i.9There are two different short versions, represented by two different Chinese translations. The earlier of these was made in the late third or early fourth century by Dharmarakṣa (Taishō 317) and does not appear to have been translated into Tibetan. The later of these short-version translations was made in the early eighth century by Bodhiruci as part of the Ratnakūṭa collection, and it is his Chinese translation (Taishō 310–313) that was the source for the ninth-century translation into Tibetan as part of the Tibetan Ratnakūṭa.

i.10There are also two different long versions. One was translated into Chinese in the early eighth century by Yijing (Taishō 1451) as part of his translation into Chinese of the Mūla­sarvāsti­vāda Vinaya. According to the Chinese catalog, Kaiyuan shijiao lu 開元釋教錄 (Taishō 2154.585c15–19), Bodhiruci inserted Yijing’s translation from the Mūla­sarvāsti­vāda Vinaya into the Chinese Ratnakūṭa collection (Taishō 310–314). This translation was, in turn, the source for the translation in the Tibetan Ratnakūṭa (Toh 57), the text translated here. The second long version does not exist in Chinese and is not an independent sūtra but is found embedded, like many other passages that may originally have also circulated independently, in the Mūla­sarvāsti­vāda Vinaya, specifically in the Kṣudrakavastu (The Chapter on Minor Matters of Monastic Discipline, Toh 6). The Tibetan of the Kṣudrakavastu was translated directly from the Sanskrit in the ninth century, and the passage within it that contains this teaching therefore differs somewhat from the corresponding passage in Yijing’s translation in the Chinese Mūla­sarvāsti­vāda Vinaya.

i.11To reiterate, there is one Chinese translation of one of the two short versions of the text, one Chinese translation of the second short version, and one Chinese translation of the first long version. With respect to the Tibetan translations in the Kangyur, there are also three versions of the text: the long and short versions in the Ratnakūṭa (Toh 57 and 58), both translated from Chinese, and a passage embedded in the Kṣudrakavastu (Toh 6), which is a long version that was translated directly from Sanskrit instead of Chinese. The details of this group of texts and their rather complex relationships are set out in a table at the end of this introduction.

i.12The present text, mngal na gnas pa (Toh 57), therefore, like the other Tibetan Ratnakūṭa version, mngal du ’jug pa (Toh 58), was translated into Tibetan from Chinese. However, there are further complications. Early in the transmission of these texts to Tibet, as seen in the early ninth-century Denkarma text inventory, as well as in the list compiled by Butön prior to the appearance of the first Kangyurs, the Tibetan titles of the two texts seem to have been switched by comparison with the Chinese: the text with the Tibetan title mngal du ’jug pa, “Entry into the Womb,” is a translation of the Chinese text (Taishō 310 [13]) with the title Chutai hui 處胎會, “Scripture on Dwelling in the Womb.” The text with the Tibetan title mngal du gnas pa, “Dwelling in the Womb,” is a translation of the Chinese text (Taishō 310 [14]) with the title Rutai jing 入胎經, “Sūtra on Entry into the Womb.” The Denkarma and Butön, whose lists of Ratnakūṭa texts both follow the order of the Chinese Ratnakūṭa closely in other respects, both differ from it in listing the longer of these texts before the shorter. Presumably as a result of these early lists, some Kangyurs, including the Degé, also include the two texts in the Ratnakūṭa in the same reverse order, calling mngal du ’jug pa (Toh 58), which is chapter 13 in the Chinese Ratnakūṭa, “chapter 14,” and mngal du gnas pa (Toh 57), which is chapter 14 in the Chinese Ratnakūṭa, “chapter 13.” To avoid confusion, these two translations are hereafter referred to as Toh 57 and Toh 58. Furthermore, in both the title and the body of Chutai hui, the interlocutor is called Ānanda. In Toh 58, he is always Nanda. There are also some differences between Toh 58 and Chutai hui and between Toh 57 and Rutai jing that suggest that the Tibetan translators had Tibetan translations of other versions of the sūtra or access to Sanskrit manuscripts. However, the two Tibetan translations generally agree with the Chinese translations on which they were based.

i.13The first English translation of Toh 57 is found in Amy Paris Langenberg’s Columbia University Ph.D. dissertation (2008). Her translation, which is based on the Peking block print and the Stok Palace manuscript Kangyur, was a tremendous help in making the present translation. This translation is based mainly on the Degé block print, while frequently referring to other Kangyurs as well as to Rutai hui and Toh 58. The two translations generally agree in substance. In some instances, however, evidence from the Chinese and from other Tibetan editions of the sūtra has suggested significantly different renditions.

i.14TRANSLATIONS OF THE GARBHĀVAKRĀNTI­SŪTRA

Translator: Dharmarakṣa (Zhu Fahu 竺法護) Date: 281 or 303

Translator: Bodhiruci (Putiliuzhi 菩提流志) Date: 703–13

Translator: Chödrup (chos grub) (Facheng 法成) Date: ninth cent.

Translator: Yijing 義淨 Date: 710

Translator: Unknown (perhaps Chödrup) Ueyama 1967, p. 178. Date: ninth cent.

Translator: Vidyākaraprabha, Dharmaśrībhadra, and Paljor (dpal ’byor) Date: ninth cent.