Child abandonment and homes for unwed mothers in ancient India: Buddhist sources.
Author | Silk, Jonathan A. |
Much is known about ordinary family life in ancient India, and about the rituals and practices that were expected to order life cycles, at least ideally and for those who belonged to classes whose routines were recorded or referred to in literature. In particular, child-bearing and associated practices receive focused attention in a variety of Indian literatures. Less is known, however, about the unusual, about borderline cases or things that societies generally seek to hide (perhaps above all, from themselves)--about what happens when things go wrong. Nevertheless, sources do occasionally indirectly provide information of interest. The two related cases examined here introduce some Buddhist evidence touching upon issues of family life beyond the normal social structures. Specifically, they concern what might happen when pregnant women lack the usual support networks of family, and what might be done with unwanted infants. In the first case I will introduce some Buddhist references that I believe suggest the existence of "homes for unwed mothers," places of refuge to which a pregnant but unprotected woman might flee. Less speculatively, Buddhist examples make clear that there existed established procedures for the abandonment of unwanted infants, designed to facilitate their discovery by others, as well as similarly stereotyped methods of less benevolent abandonment. While I will not suggest any necessary historical link between these two cases, that of the "home for unwed mothers" and child abandonment, there is a strong thematic affinity between them, since both concern what may happen when pregnancy and childbirth do not follow their normatively sanctioned and expected course. Obviously, not all the attitudes, institutions, and practices to which I make reference coexisted, nor were they necessarily shared by groups in different times and places. Rather than positing broad claims, the present paper seeks simply to draw attention to a range of ideas, institutions, and practices that may have been present, somewhere at some time, in ancient Indian society, (1) with the expectation that once such issues are raised, further relevant materials might be recognized.
While the evidence for the existence of formal procedures for child abandonment is considerably stronger than that for the existence of specifically tasked "homes for unwed mothers," it makes sense to begin with the latter from the perspective of the temporal sequence of the birth process. In this light, then, let us look first at a suggestive passage in the commentary to the Theravada Therigatha. This text begins its rendition of the tale of the nun Uppalavanna as follows: (2)
savatthiyam kira annatarassa vanijassa bhariyaya paccusavelayam kucchiyam gabbho santhasi| sa tam na annasi | vanijo vibhataya rattiya sakatesu bhandam aropetva rajagaham uddissa gato | tassa gacchante kale gabbho vaddhetva paripakam agamasi | atha nam sassu evam aha | mama putto cirappavuttho tvan ca gabbhini papakam taya katan ti | sa tava puttato annam purisam na janami ti aha | tam sutva pi sassu asaddhanti tam gharato nikkaddhi | sa samikam gavesanti anukkamena rajagaham sampatta | tava-d-eva c'assa kammajavatesu calantesu maggasamipe annataram salam pavittaya gabbhavutthanam ahosi | sa suvannabimbasadisam puttam vijayitva anathasalayam sayapetva udakakiccattham bahi nikkhanta | The story is told that one morning an embryo was established in the womb of the wife of a certain merchant in the town of Savatthi, though she did not know it. At daybreak, the merchant loaded his wares in carts and set off in the direction of Rajagaha. As time went by, the embryo grew and reached maturity. Then her mother-in-law said to her, "My son has been away from home for a long time, and you are pregnant. You have done something wicked." She said, "I have known no man but your son." Even though she heard her say that, the mother-in-law, not believing her, threw her out of the house. She went in search of her husband, and in due course she arrived [at the outskirts of] Rajagaha. Then as soon as her labor pains began, she went into a building close to the road and gave birth. She gave birth to a son who resembled a golden bimba fruit, and laying him down in the anathasala, she went outside for the obligatory [ritual] ablution [for purification after giving birth]. Where does a woman go who, pregnant and having been evicted from her husband's home (and who thus is, as we will see, anatha 'without a protector'), wants to give birth to her child in a place of safety? In translating the Therigatha commentary, Pruitt, probably following A Critical Pali Dictionary (CPD), (3) understood the key term anathasala in the passage above as 'rest house'. This word does appear elsewhere in Pali (only post-canonically), as well as in Sanskrit, although dictionaries of the latter generally do not record it. (4) They do, however, know the structurally and semantically similar anatha-kuti, anatha-mandapa, and anatha-sabha, (5) which they understand to designate something like a 'poor house' or 'pauper's hostel', indicating a place of refuge for one without material resources. Likewise, the meaning proposed by CPD for anatha-sala, or something like this meaning, is clearly proper in a number of passages. For instance, the commentary to the Petavatthu tells the story of a young man who squanders the wealth left him by his parents. All his resources including his land and house gone, he "dwelt at the anathasala in that same city, eating (what he had got) after wandering about begging with bowl in hand" (kapalahattho bhikkham caritva bhunjanto tasmim yeva nagare anathasalayam vasati). Here the translator's 'hall for the destitute' is surely an apposite rendering of anathasala. (6) Likewise, in the Visuddhimagga a pitiful man with hands and feet cut off sits in a 'shelter for the helpless', as Nyanamoli rendered the term. (7) A similar passage, repeated several times, speaks of a helpless man (anathamanussa), afflicted with open sores, surrounded by flies and lying in an anathasala, to whom people bring bandages and medicines. This image again confirms the anathasala as a last-chance refuge for those in dire straits. (8)
Etymologically the compound suggests 'a hall (sala, Sanskrit sala) for those without protector (anatha), the vulnerable'. This would accord with the senses given Sanskrit anathakuti, anathamandapa, and anathasabha. The first member of this compound, anatha, in both Pali and Sanskrit can refer generally to one without a protector, and as such has a rather broad semantic range. (9) I would like to suggest the possibility, however, that a rather more specific meaning could be in play, and that in the Therigatha commentary another, more directed meaning is possible for the compound as well. This suggestion is inspired by comparison with a Sanskrit passage.
Sanskrit anathasala (like the Pali, feminine) occurs in the Buddhist Ratnagotravibhaga, where we find it alongside its evident synonyms anathavasatha and anathavesman in a set of three verses. (10) The text begins with a line in prose stating that the defilements (klesa) are comparable to a pregnant woman (apannasattvanari), one of nine similes of the tathagatagarbha, and then goes on:
nari yatha kacid anathabhuta vased anathavasathe virupa | garbhena rajasriyam udvahanti na savabudhyeta nrpam svakuksau || 121 || anathasaleva bhavopapattir antarvatistrivad asuddhasattvah| tadgarbhavat tesv amalah sa dhatur bhavanti yasmin sati te sanathah || 122 || yadvat stri malinambaravrtatanur bibhatsarupanvita vinded duhkham anathavesmani param garbhdntarasthe nrpe| tadvat klesavasad asantamanaso duhkhalayastha janah sannathesu ca [dagger] satsv anathamatayah svatmantarasthesv api || 123 || [dagger] read * sannathesv api (Takasaki 1989: 316, n. 114.6)? As an example: a certain unattractive woman without a protector (anathabhuta) might stay in an anathavasatha, and carrying in her womb glorious royalty might not know the king in her own womb. Birth in a [samsaric] existence is like the anathasala, impure beings are like a pregnant woman, and that stainless essence in them is like that embryo, thanks to which they come to be possessed of a protector (sanatha). Just as a woman, her body covered by a filthy garment, of disgusting appearance, might experience supreme pain while in an anathavesman when a king is within her womb, so living beings staying in an abode of pain, minds unsettled by the force of defilements, imagine themselves to be without a protector (anatha) even though true protectors (sannatha) exist residing within their very own bodies. (11) Takasaki interprets the clearly synonymous anathavasatha, anathasala, and anathavesman in the sense of 'retreat' (kodokusha [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) or 'orphanage' (kojiin [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. (12) Now, it is plain both that these verses repeatedly play with the word natha, literally 'protector', and that key to the imagery is a pregnant woman whose status is problematic. The basic doctrinal point here is that we beings, although unaware of it, mired as we are in defilements, contain within ourselves the seed or embryo of buddhahood. Like an ugly and illclad woman who conceals within herself the embryo of a future king, we hardly manifest through our outward appearance the treasure of intrinsic awakening which lies within us. (13) Where does the pitiful woman, pregnant without a protector, go? To the same refuge to which the pregnant Uppalavanna fled, having been evicted by her mother-in-law, as we read in the Therigatha commentary passage cited above. Contextually the basic sense of natha here must be 'husband'. The woman 'without a protector' (anathabhuta) is an 'unmarried' woman (or, as was Uppalavanna, functionally unmarried)--not only unmarried, but unmarried and pregnant. Immediately, however, the text plays with this, picking up natha in its significance of 'lord', here...
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