Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.31337/oz.78.5.1
Abortion in the Oldest Brahmanical Religious and Legal Literature
Ivan Andrijanić
orcid.org/0000-0002-1544-585X
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
This paper treats the subject of induced abortion in the Brahmanical (Hindu) religious tradition by focusing on traditional textual sources. First, the author gives a brief explanation of how Brahmanism views the “personality” of the embryo and the question of when life enters it. From the oldest Upaniṣad sources, it is evident that life is present in the embryo from the beginning. The medical manual Caraka-saṃhitā describes the descent of the personal soul into the embryo at the moment of conception. A different tradition is preserved in the younger Garbha-upaniṣad according to which life in the embryo begins in the seventh month of pregnancy. In the Vedic corpus, the oldest textual layer of Brahmanical sacred literature, abortion is often equated with the murder of a Brahmin, which testifies to the gravity of the transgression. The texts of sacred and secular law, the Dharmaśāstras, classify transgressions, prescribe penances, and in dealing with the problem of abortion, they build on older, Vedic sources whereby they equate the transgression of induced abortion with the murder of a Brahmin, but also with the murder of an Atreyī, a fertile woman, due to the potential of the embryo’s developing into a learned Brahmin later in life. In all these texts abortion is most often considered in the context of the Brahmin social class.
Keywords
induced abortion; Dharmaśāstra; Bhrūṇahan; embryo; penance; atonement
Hrčak ID:
308636
URI
Publication date:
12.10.2023.
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