According to Hindu tradition, physical birth is one of a series of life-cycle events, beginning with conception and ending with death, that define a human life. Although these events can occur by themselves, Hinduism associates them with specific ritual acts, collectively referred to as samskara, a word that literally means “making complete.” It is through these life-cycle events that a person becomes a full-fledged member of the Hindu community. Hindu ideas about birth are also deeply affected by the belief in transmigration, since it means that an individual may undergo a nearly endless series of rebirths. This idea is pervasive in India, appearing also as a key element in the Buddhist and Jain traditions.
The Hindu cosmos is populated by gods and men. Both are born, but men alone die. In the early Vedic mythology—Vedic refers to a culturally dominant form of Indian religion, ca. 1500-500 BCE, the main principles of which fed the development of the later Hindu tradition—there are numerous references to the birth of the gods. The details are often shrouded in mystery: Indra, the warrior god, emerges in hero fashion from his mother’s side. The fire-god Agni is variously said to be born from the earth, the sun, or the cosmic waters, as well as more prosaically from the firemaking drill itself—the two sticks that produce the fire and are identified as his father and mother.
One prominent and pervasive myth ascribes the birth of a number of important Vedic gods to a primordial divine being, Aditi. After giving birth to seven gods, Aditi brings forth the mysterious figure of Martanda—a Sanskrit word that suggests a lifeless egg—that she throws away. Martanda differs from his siblings—the seven gods who precede him in birth—for of him alone it is said he “would in turn beget offspring and then soon die” (Doniger 1981, 39), identifying him as either the first man or perhaps the progenitor of the human race. The message is clear: Unlike the gods, men are born to die. That they bear offspring—which, after the primordial phase of creation, the gods do not—symbolizes their death as well as their continued life.
The desire for progeny is a prominent theme in Indian literature. In the earliest texts, progeny are—along with cattle, land, long life, and freedom from illness—one of the “goods of life” supplicants hope to win from the gods. In one Rgvedic prayer (ca. 1400 BCE), the gods are asked to ensure that a new bride brings forth offspring, and in other prayers they are asked to prepare the womb, set the embryo in it, and protect it during pregnancy and at birth from maladies of “evil name.” Sons are highly esteemed; the authors of the Atharvaveda (ca. 1200 BCE) describe how sons are obtained by placing the male seed into the woman, but also implore the gods to place a male embryo into the womb. In this same text, there is a prayer asking the gods’ assistance in birth, to loosen the woman’s limbs as she delivers, open her birth canal, and, following delivery, help the afterbirth descend. In a later text (ca. 500 BCE), a specific ritual for the begetting of a child— in particular, a son—is described: A man should approach his wife three days after her menstrual period ends; eat a meal of rice with her, which, depending on its preparation, affects the type of child born; and then have intercourse with her while asking the gods to prepare her womb and place in it a fetus. When the woman is about to deliver, the man should sprinkle her with water and declare, “As from all sides the wind churns a lotus pond, so may your fetus stir and come out with the afterbirth.” Then, taking the child on his lap, the man says, “In this boy may I prosper a thousandfold and thrive in my own house; rich in offspring and livestock, may disaster never strike his line” (Olivelle 1998, 161).
Over the centuries (ca. 500-200 BCE), these rituals of conception and birth were incorporated into a larger series of rituals events, the samskaras, or life-cycle rites that carried an individual from birth, through initiation, marriage, and finally to death, and which remain current among orthodox, high-caste Hindus. Although these rites are variously enumerated, the main phases surrounding birth are: the ritual of impregnation, for which specific times are prescribed, and which is viewed as a man’s sacred duty; the ritual of securing a male embryo, performed approximately in the second month of pregnancy; the ritual parting of the mother’s hair in the fourth or fifth month, which protects the embryo; and the birth ritual itself, which in distinct phases seeks intelligence, long life, and strength for the child, and ends with the severing of the umbilical.
The last of the samskaras is the cremation rite, which in the Hindu worldview leads the deceased individual to another birth. In the Brhadaranyaka Upanisads, this process is described in physical terms: The individual becomes the smoke of the funeral pyre, rises up to the moon—where both gods and ancestors dwell—and then passes into the wind, the rain, and the plants. The individual in turn becomes food and then semen, and so gains a new birth.
Here, it is proposed that the type of rebirth an individual gains is determined by his actions (karma)—good or bad—a notion that gains widespread acceptance in the Hindu tradition. According to one Indian school of thought, the embryo is aware of its past deeds and earlier births but, “when reaching the opening of the genital organs, oppressed by the squeezing . . . he can no more remember his births and deaths and has no knowledge any more of good and bad deeds” (Deussen 1980 [1897], 643). However, the type of womb into which an individual is placed clearly reflects the nature of those past deeds—a principle that is widely accepted in Hindu thought: “. . . people whose behavior is pleasant can expect to enter a pleasant womb, like that of a woman of the Brahmin [class] . . . but people of foul behavior can expect to enter a foul womb, like that of a dog, a pig, or an outcaste woman” (Olivelle 1998, 142).
The ideas of karma and rebirth are central concepts in the other Indian traditions that developed in the late Vedic period (ca. 500 BCE), in particular, in Buddhism and Jainism. These traditions acknowledge that past and present deeds affect the conditions of the individual’s rebirth and that the possible states and numbers of rebirths have a near interminable quantity—the Jains propose 8,400,000 possible types of births. The stories of the Buddha’s previous births are among the most beloved of the Buddhist literary tradition. The birth, or rebirth, process was described in an early Buddhist text as requiring the confluence of three factors: the union of mother and father; the mother’s fertility, based on her menstrual phase; and the presence of the being about to be reborn, called a gandhabba—a generic term for a “heavenly being,” the exact constitution of which is not explained. The Jain texts, although widely acknowledging that rebirth can occur in any of a number of states or conditions, are silent regarding the actual process of birth.
