Buddhist Blood Taboo: Mary Douglas, Female Impurity, and Classical Indian Buddhism

Author(s): Amy Paris Langenberg

Source: Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 84, No. 1 (MARCH 2016), pp.
157-191
Published by: Oxford University Press
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 Buddhist Blood Taboo: Mary
Douglas, Female Impurity, and
Classical Indian Buddhism
Amy Paris Langenberg*

Mary Douglas is a prominent figure in the pantheon of religious studies,

but the relevance of Douglas's influential theories about ritual pollution
for Classical Indian Buddhism, a literate tradition that is sometimes criti-
cal of ritual and often explicitly distances itself from physicalized inter-
pretations of bodily impurity, is not obvious. In fact, students of
Classical Indian Buddhism have often argued that ideas about ritual im-
purity, including blood taboos, hold no place of importance in that tradi-
tion. This article brings together materials from the Indian Buddhist
tradition and Douglas's theories of pollution in society to fulfill the dual
purpose of testing Douglas's theory in a new arena and better articulating
and explaining Indian Buddhist notions of female impurity.

MARY DOUGLAS'S INTELLECTUAL BIOGRAPHER, Richard

Fardon, observed that "system-building has been the proper reserve of
dour men rather than witty women" (1999: 209). A witty woman,

*Amy Paris Langenberg, Eckerd College, Religious Studies, 4200 54th Avenue South,
St. Petersburg, FL 33711, USA. E-mail: [email protected]. Several colleagues greatly contributed
to the execution of this study. I would especially like to thank Lori Meeks for inspiring me to tackle
this topic with her invitation to participate in the 2012 "Gender and Ideologies of Blood Pollution
Workshop" at the University of Southern California, Anãlayo for his support of my research on
menstrual law in Buddhist Vinaya, Natalie Gummer for reading an early draft, Matthew Bagger for
many edifying conversations regarding Mary Douglas and for reading and commenting on this
article not once but twice, and my anonymous reviewers at the J AAR for their very constructive
comments.

Journal of the American Academy of Religion, March 2016, Vol. 84, No. 1, pp. 157-191
doi: 1 0. 1093/jaarel/lfv059
Advance Access publication on August 3, 2015
© The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the American Academy of
Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]

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1 58 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Douglas was nonetheless a system-builder. She has long been a promi-

nent figure in the pantheon of religious studies. Her great topics- ritual,
purity, the body - have occupied an equally significant position in its cur-
ricula. Douglas's core premise, inspired by Emile Durkheim, is that our a
priori intuitions about the natural world, couched in the idiom of reli-
gion, are compelled by the exigencies of human social existence. Her ex-
plorations of the body as a symbol of society and analysis of pollution as a
mediator of social boundaries, both built on this core Durkheimian
insight, have been pivotal in scholarly interpretations of ancient Israelite
religion, Brahmanism, African religions, and many other religious tradi-
tions. The relevance of Douglas's theories for classical Indian Buddhism,
a literate tradition that includes no pollution-based dietary laws, some-
times explicitly asserts purity to be a feature of the mind (not the body),
and is occasionally critical of religious ritual, is not obvious.1 In particu-
lar, it has not been obvious to students of classical Indian Buddhism that
ideas regarding female impurity, "Buddhist blood taboos" as I dub them
metaphorically in my title, hold any place of importance there at all.
Applying Douglas's theories of pollution to the Indian Buddhist example
illuminates notions of female impurity that have been alternatively
ignored, denied, or misattributed. Explaining Buddhist purity discourse is
a desideratum, as the status of female bodies, to which this discourse is
central, is a topic of both importance and puzzlement in contemporary
scholarly discussions of gender in Buddhism.
Mary Douglas's work has been subject to a range of critiques over her
long career. Here, I do not attempt to catalogue all of these, but focus on
two challenges of particular relevance to Indian Buddhist purity discourse.
First, Douglas has been criticized for overestimating the meaningful coher-
ence of religious cultures in her theory making. In short, her system-build-
ing is judged to be too systematic. The Indian Buddhist example contains
within itself sufficient complexity to provide a good testing ground for her
theory's explanatory power in cases of internal contradiction and segmen-
tation. Second, in its special focus on female impurity, a topic that Douglas
herself never took up with much enthusiasm, this study indexes a particu-
lar body of data her interpretive framework may systematically occlude:
namely, the society-making efforts of subordinated or excluded groups
such as women. This study examines both of these salient critiques in light
of a body of data to which Douglas's theories have not been applied in a
thorough-going manner, and that Douglas herself did not examine in any

^or one of the few (and now quite old) available studies of the concept of purity in South Asian
Buddhism, see Tambiah (1985).

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 Langenberg: Buddhist Blood Taboo 159

depth. Douglas's seminal theory of purity and pollution brings neede

clarity to the obscure topic of female impurity in Indian Buddhism. T
Indian Buddhist case offers, in turn, an opportunity to consider afresh th
value and the limits of Douglas's work.

DOUGLAS ON FEMALE IMPURITY

Douglas's most famous monograph, Purity and Danger : An Analysi

of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo , was published in 1966. In it, s
argues that "religious beliefs express society's awareness of itsel
(Douglas 1966: 101). Religious beliefs and symbols have psychologi
force; however, religious systems draw on emotionally powerful ideas a
images selectively in order to express not the idiosyncratic concerns of in-
dividuals but the vital concerns of the social group as a whole. For th
early Douglas, the body is the paradigmatic source of such viscerally res
nant symbols. Her slogan is "talk about the body is talk about society
For instance, bodily fluids, like menstrual blood, saliva, and semen, pas
in and out of the body, symbolizing the breaches of the social body a
points of vulnerability and exchange. Douglas observes, "It seems that
our deepest fears and desires take expression with a kind of witty aptne
To understand body pollution we should try to argue back from t
known dangers of society to the known selection of body themes and t
to recognize what appositeness is there" (1966: 121).
A key component of Douglas's pollution theory concerns the notio
of anomaly. For Douglas, impurity is always connected to classificatio
systems. Matthew Bagger, who has applied Douglas's theories to the top
of religious paradox in mysticism, explains the basis for this connectio
as follows: "The practical necessity of rendering a society stable and th
psychological satisfaction of achieving consonance tend in conjunction
produce a correspondence between the society's formal pattern of soc
relations and the seams of its constructed universe" (2007: 41). Fo
Douglas, impure things are usually anomalies that do not conform to ac
cepted notions of cosmological and social order. Ultimately, polluti
beliefs derive their power not only from deeply held cosmological belie
but also because they continuously express and sustain social structur
flagging transgressions and guarding points of entry especially when
other political and social sanctions are not very strong, direct, or compl
(Douglas 1966: 132). Thus, pollution practice "arises from the desire to
keep straight the internal lines of the social system," tapping into stro
emotions like horror and disgust in order to accomplish this wor
(Douglas 1966: 140). The impurity of menstrual blood fits with these co
cerns, as this blood crosses the body's envelope when it should not. T

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1 60 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

is because menses indicates the absence of pregnancy, which in most pa-

triarchal societies is the ideal state for a married woman in her fertile
years.
Douglas addresses the ritual functions of female blood at several
points in Purity and Danger. She hypothesizes that it is a source of pollu-
tion in societies in which the approved relationship between men and
women affords women access to certain kinds of power despite clear ide-
ologies of male superiority (Douglas 1966: 140-158). In these situations,
even though the social rules may be clearly defined and legally enforced,
the community complains of and flags (but does not fully resolve) its in-
ternal gender dissonance through ideas of sexual pollution.2 Minor
female rebellions are quelled every time purity rules remind them of their
social location. In Purity and Danger , Douglas also contrasts religious
systems in which unclean things such as menstrual blood are always
abominated and "composting religions" in which they are viewed as dan-
gerous but also paradoxically revered as sacred (1966: 167). In compost-
ing religions, unclean things are viewed ambivalently as a source of
danger and a potential source of tremendous power. These more com-
plete religions recognize that the disintegration and lack of order inherent
in impurity is also redolent with regrowth and renewal. Just as rotting
waste breaks down in the compost pile, loses its foulness, and becomes a
richly nutritious source of new life in time, in composting religions what
is ordinarily scrupulously avoided is faced, honored, and even consumed
under special ritual conditions. Thus, "that which is rejected is ploughed
back for a renewal of life" (Douglas 1966: 167). In a composting religion,
female blood is likely to be respected as a source of life, even while it is
feared as contaminating.
In a 1972 lecture given at University College London entitled "Self-ev-
idence," Douglas takes the powerful but sometimes half-formed theses re-
garding pollution and society found in Purity and Danger to a further
stage of development (1975: 276-318).3 Here, she argues that in societies
in which outsiders such as exogamous wives, converts, or slaves are regu-
larly incorporated into their core institutions, taboo things are treated

2In an essay published two years after Purity and Danger entitled "Couvade and Menstruation,"
Douglas again addresses the topic of female blood taboos, restating that they are frequently deployed
to manipulate interpersonal relationships and arguing that, when displayed in public rituals, they can
be read as statements about normative social structure, especially the relationship between men and
women (1975: 61).
My reading of Douglas has been greatly influenced by Bagger's application of Douglas's theories
to the religious uses of paradox in his monograph The Uses of Paradox: Religion, Self-Transformation ,
and the Absurd. For an exceptionally clear discussion of "Self-evidence" in relationship to varieties of
mystical practice, see Bagger (2007: 40-47).

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 Langenberg: Buddhist Blood Taboo 1 61

positively, though with caution, as symbols that mediate between huma

society and the gods, or other manifestations of the divine. When venerat-
ed as sacred mediators, taboo things provide access to power. In societie
that must guard their gates against intruders and are regularly threaten
by outsiders, taboo things are consistently abominated and deeme
impure. They are not tolerated as mediating symbols. All social system
exist somewhere on this continuum, with one end representing total xe
nophobia accompanied by the abomination of anomalous or impur
things, the other free and open borders accompanied by a veneration o
the same (Douglas 1975: 281). Here Douglas's theory predicts that fema
blood would likely be regarded as a filthy abomination in an endogamou
society, and as dangerous but powerful in an exogamous society. In th
new theoretical development, which links the sacralization of the impu
to social concerns more closely, Douglas is able to incorporate her earlie
observations that female blood is the object of religious respect in com-
posting religions but also often a tool of social control into one theory.
In Natural Symbols , published four years after Purity and Danger ,
Douglas further elaborates her analysis of symbol systems in relationshi
to social structure. There, she distinguishes between "group," the oute
boundary of a community, and "grid," the structural divisions within t
community. Some societies are high group/high grid; that is, they emph
size boundaries between themselves and others and also internal hierar-
chical structures. Others are high group/low grid, and so forth. Thus,
societies structure themselves variously, sometimes in an internally
complex manner. In this early work, Douglas often takes note of the reli-
gious rituals and symbols that mark relationships between insiders and
outsiders, or between those with more or less power within the group.
She does not, however, consider cases in which distinguishable social sub-
environments operating side-by-side in one complex society mutually
produce a religion.4 For the early Douglas, the interests and perspectives
of whatever group is dominant always take priority in the ritual and sym-
bolic expressions of the group as a whole. In Douglas's examples from
Purity and Danger , Natural Symbols , and "Self-evidence," women are typ-
ically objects of social exchange, not agents of social action. It follows that
menstruating women are likely to be the objects of religious belief and
practice, but not its agents.

4Bagger notes that "In [Douglas's] more recent work . . . she has tended to focus on institutions
and/or groups with rival social visions, rather than whole societies. . . . Her thesis that attitudes
toward exchange condition response to anomaly need not apply only to full-scale societies and their
marriage practices. Attitudes towards exchange exert their influence at every scale" (2007: 44).

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1 62 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

In the introduction to their 1988 edited volume on the anthropology

of menstruation, Thomas Buckley and Alma Gottlieb critique Douglas's
emphasis on the dominant and formal structures that are upheld by male
power, arguing that she does not seriously consider the implications any
parallel structures women create and perpetuate amongst themselves
might have for her overall theories of pollution. Buckley and Gottlieb are
particularly concerned with the ways in which Douglas's totalizing theory
makes the alternative or supplementary pollution beliefs and practices of
women invisible (1988: 30-31). They are certainly correct in their assess-
ment of Douglas's neglect of the symbolic and ritual world-building ca-
pacity of "women, serfs, and slaves" in her early work (1970: 84). In
Natural Symbols , for instance, Douglas calls the structures of women's so-
cieties "delicate," their significance "less than the significance of men's re-
lations with one another in the public role system" (1970: 84). She does
acknowledge the possession cults that sometimes characterize female reli-
giosity in highly gender-differentiated religious cultures, the best-known
example being the zar cults observed among the Muslim peoples of
Eastern Africa (Lewis [1969] 1971; Boddy 1988). Like I. M. Lewis,
Douglas calls such cults "effervescent," however, and attributes their sup-
posedly chaotic and unstable nature to the low grid/low group nature of
female social organization (1970: 80-82). In short, the early Douglas does
not recognize the symbolic or ritual complexities of women's religion that
scholars have since discovered. The Buddhist sources to be considered
here represent an elite, male frame of reference.5 In fact, if my sources
more strongly expressed the agency of subordinates or outsiders, such as
women and heterodox practitioners, the usefulness of Douglas's classic
early theory, which accounts only for the dominant view, might be under-
cut. Nonetheless, it is important to acknowledge that ancient women
may have generated supplementary or alternative pollution beliefs that
are not readily accessed in classical Buddhist texts and may be even
further occluded through the application of Douglas's theory.
Douglas returned often to the topic of purity, notably in her studies of
Israelite religion. Douglas's original chapter in Purity and Danger on
Leviticus interprets the lists of clean and unclean animals found in
chapter eleven using the idea of anomaly. That which falls outside of

5Although I would contend that the female voice can sometimes be heard in the case of Vinaya
sources, I will not make that argument here. The Therīgāthā , a collection of verses attributed to the
early nuns' community, is another example of an early Buddhist text that many scholars believe
record a female perspective.
6Of course, nothing in Douglas's view would preclude it from being applied to a social group in
which women were the dominant social actors, men the objects of exchange.

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 Langenberg: Buddhist Blood Taboo 163

ideal categories of divine creation - for instance, a cloven footed ani

that does not chew its cud - is anomalous with respect to those ideal ca
gories and therefore impure. Douglas's study of Leviticus revolution
the way biblical scholars read that text and was the starting point for
vibrant conversation on purity and ritual law within the field. After initi
ating this conversation in 1966, Douglas jumped disciplinary boundar
to join it in earnest during the early 1990s. Most relevant to this artic
her Leviticus as Literature, published in 1999.7 In discussing Leviticus
and 15, Douglas returns to the topic of female blood. Leviticus 12 say
that a woman will be unclean for a period of time after birthing a m
child and must seek atonement. Leviticus 15 concerns the uncleanness
that ensues after the discharge of semen or womb blood.8 In her discus-
sions of Leviticus 12 and 15, Douglas abandons completely her early em-
phasis on the body as a universal symbol of society and her attendant
analysis of bodily fluids as posing ritually significant breaches of the phys-
ical envelope. In fact, she flatly states that ritual purity in Leviticus has
"nothing to do with regular inflows and outflows of the functionary
body" (Douglas 1999: 179). In this new analysis, the discourse of purity
in Leviticus is uniquely tied to the ritual symbolism of the tabernacle, not
to the body as a symbol of society.
For our purposes, the most important contribution from Leviticus as
Literature is not its particular interpretation of Leviticus, but rather the
critical view it affords of Douglas's earlier work. This view is all the more
arresting in that it is provided to us reflexively by the author herself.
Leviticus as Literature makes us aware that whereas the game-changing
theories of Purity and Danger regarding body, society, and ritual pollu-
tion are not to be ignored or forgotten, there are also reasons not to tarry

7Like the Douglas of Purity and Danger , this one still prefers holistic explanations. Here Douglas's
interpretive framework takes as its whole the literary world of Leviticus in relationship to other
biblical texts rather than ritual systems in general. Moreover, she comes to regard the priestly law
found in the Pentateuch as unique and exceptional. In the preface to Leviticus as Literature, Douglas
explicitly states that "general pollution theory still stands, but its application to the Bible is limited"
(1999: viii; see also Klawans 2003: 96; Lemos 2009: 242). Some reviewers have been critical of
Douglas's biblical exceptionalism, charging her with joining too many other biblical scholars in
apologetically asserting the "revolutionary nature of Israelite monotheism, which contrasted with the
paganistic worldview of not only all other ancient religions but all religions not ultimately deriving
from Judaism, that unique and incomparable faith" (Lemos 2009: 236; see also Klawans 2003).
8In this new work, Douglas argues that the charges of uncleanness and abomination require
separate ritual responses in Leviticus, and should not be collapsed into one. Uncleanness, as from
childbirth, is contagious and requires atonement so that the tabernacle may be approached. Contact
with what is abominated calls for no particular ritual response, though it is against God's
compassionate concern for the fecundity of the earth. These distinctions are developed from studying
the specifics of biblical language and symbolism, and are therefore particular to the Levitical textual
environment.

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1 64 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

indefinitely in that broad comparative moment but to dial in to the

unique particularities of one system. Douglas's close examination of the
literary world of Leviticus reveals how things can slip out of the place you
assigned them, or fail to conform to an expected pattern at close range.
The close view does not, however, entirely invalidate the view from
farther out. In the first pages of Leviticus as Literature , Douglas is still
willing to admit that "where lines of abominability are drawn, heavy
stakes are at issue. The classification of the universe is part and parcel of
social organization," and to grant that the standard pollution theory
"works well enough ... for the cult of the tabernacle, and the dignity of
the priesthood" (1999: vii). At the same time, she finds herself forced to
make substantial adjustments to the standard theory to accommodate the
peculiarities of the material in question, particularly the logic governing
the list of unclean animals of Leviticus 1 1 that began the whole discussion
of Levitical purity laws in the first place.
The interpretation of Buddhist materials offered here is more affirma-
tive than critical of the overall value of Douglas's body of work on purity.
It demonstrates Douglas's usefulness in interpreting a corpus of linked
and inter-communicating religious texts as historically complex as, for in-
stance, the biblical corpus. I do not follow the later Douglas in claiming
for this tradition, or any particular text in this tradition, any kind of
unique status, although some other scholars of Buddhism might wish to
do just that. Rather, here I take the view that, at least for now, more is to
be gained from viewing Buddhist impurity as a total system normative for
social reality and comparable to ritual impurity systems in other religions
than in focusing on how it is unique and specific. Obviously, the classical
Indian Buddhist case is unique and specific, as is any religious system at a
particular point in time, but here the close view gives way temporarily to
the wide view of Purity and Danger and "Self-evidence" in order to estab-
lish the relevance and importance of ritual impurity in scholarly dis-
course on Buddhism at a basic level. In its maturity with respect to the
question of purity, Buddhist Studies is closer to Biblical Studies pre- 1966,
the moment Douglas's revolutionary comparative reading of Levitical law
made its entrance, than Biblical Studies in 1999, when she dialed in to a
more historically careful reading of the Levitical purity laws. It is time,
then, to subject the Indian Buddhist example to the strong light of
Douglas's theory.

BEYOND SPONBERG'S TYPOLOGY

A dominant thread of Buddhist thought removes notions of purity

from the realm of ritual practice and reestablishes it as a feature of the

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 Langenberg: Buddhist Blood Taboo 1 65

mind. According to the Dhammapada , a digest of wise sayings located

the Pāli Buddhist canon, for instance:

By oneself is wrong done, by oneself is one defiled.

By oneself wrong is not done, by oneself, surely, is one cleansed.
One cannot purify another,
Purity and impurity are in oneself [alone].9

Mahäyäna literature advises the developing bodhisattva on variou

methods of ethical and cognitive self-purification. These passages refer
cleansing mind, body, and speech of desire, hatred, and ignorance
their various forms. Though moral perfection is imagined to result in
beautiful and perfumed physical form, it cannot be obtained through
ritual bathing or other pseudo-levitical observances. This Buddhist spir
tualization of purity has encouraged the assumption that more physica
ized references to the uncleanness of women's bodies and reproductiv
fluids must be alien to the Buddhist tradition proper. In addition, th
analogy of Christianity has been readily available, especially to earlier
generations of scholars. Just as the cleansing revelations of the N
Testament were supposed to have rendered the old Israelite holiness law
irrelevant, the Buddha's insights into the truths of suffering and causality
were supposed to have superceded the old purity laws.
In fact, classical Indian Buddhism offers a diversity of views regardin
female blood, some that spiritualize the notion of purity, and others th
do not. In certain early discourses attributed to the Buddha, the signif
cance of female embodiment, with its womb and its blood, is apparentl
downplayed, and women are declared capable of achieving all the spirit
al fruits of monastic life, including the highest fruit of arhatship.10 In the
monastic legal tradition of the Vinaya, female blood is not afforded sym
bolic importance, although it is often said in passing to be the product
moral taint. A series of careful rules legislate its practical management.
contrast, certain Mahäyäna masters employ very intense rhetoric regar
ing the blood-filled female body, likening it to an outhouse, cesspool, o
rotting cadaver, and blaming the female womb for human impurity
general. Lastly, Vedic Brahman legal texts, which describe ritual traditio

9 Dhammapada 165, translated in Carter and Palihawadana (2000: 31). See also Gutschow (200
200).
The Buddhas assertion that women can indeed achieve all four fruits of the monastic life
(stream-winning, once- returning, nonreturning, and arhatship) is in the story of the founding of th
nuns' order at Anguttara-nikãya 4.277 and in the Chinese translation of Madhyama-ãgama 116
Another example of this attitude can be found at vagga 1, samyutta 5, section 2 of the Samyutta-
nikãya , in which the nun Somā is described as expressing disdain regarding the relevance of he
female sex in spiritual matters.

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1 66 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

likely to have influenced Buddhist lay householding, describe female

blood as something life-giving but dangerous.
Alan Sponberg's oft-cited roundup of early Buddhist attitudes toward
the feminine (1992) offers one account of this diversity that still rings
true for many scholars. Sponberg contends that the original and most au-
thentic Buddhist attitude toward women is that of "soteriological inclu-
siveness," the view that men and women are identical in their capacity for
ignorance and suffering and have access to the same enlightened state. He
and many other scholars of Buddhism attribute this view to the Buddha
himself, or at least to the very earliest community. According to
Sponberg's scheme, as Buddhist orders established themselves during the
several centuries after the Buddha's death, built monasteries, increased in
numbers, accumulated wealth, and ceased to wander, nuns were subjected
to "institutional androcentrism," exemplified by the eight "rules to be re-
spected" ( gurudharma/garudhamma ) that subordinate the female to the
male community.11 This, according to Sponberg, was the product of
Buddhist sensitivity to public opinion. Dependence on patronage re-
quired the Buddhist monastic community to entomb their spiritual egali-
tarianism inside the androcentric structures of ancient Indian society.
Simultaneously, says Sponberg, the psychological pressures of male celi-
bacy gave rise to "ascetic misogyny," including scatological rants against
women and their filthy bodies. To Sponberg, this view is even less sup-
portable in Buddhist contexts than institutional androcentrism, since
clinging to sex distinction is a mark of ignorance, at least according to the
certain Mahâyâna strains of Buddhist thought (1992: 22-23). Sponberg's
is a narrative of decline in which a radical and idealistic movement gradu-
ally succumbs to conservative social pressures and misogynistic habits of
mind.12 But his narrative does not explain why statements pertaining to
female impurity are present in early layers of the sutta/āgama tradition,
coexisting with ideas about spiritual egalitarianism from the beginning,
nor does it allow for the fact that the Vinaya tradition is actually inclusive
of women (Finnegan 2009; Jyväsjärvi 2011; Langenberg 2013a, 2013b,
2014). This is evident in the mildness of its impurity rhetoric and creative
attempts to legislate menstruation effectively.

nThe eight rules include recommendations that nuns pay respect to monks no matter how junior,
that they conduct disciplinary hearings in front of both assemblies, that they never challenge monks
verbally, etc. They are generally understood to ritually and legally subordinate nuns as a group to
monks as a group. Exact lists of rules vary somewhat in different traditions.
In Sponberg's estimation, the emergence of Tantric schools of thought that tie liberative gnosis
to the integration of male and female, a vision of freedom he dubs "soteriological androgyny,"
represents a reaffirmation of the "noble aspirations" of Buddhism to allow a place for women
(1992: 28).

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 Langenberg: Buddhist Blood Taboo 167

Mary Douglas's sophisticated explanation of purity belief offers sch

ars of gender and Buddhism the potential to build upon Sponberg's t
pology but move beyond his narrative of decline. Douglas's theory link
social porousness to the presence or absence of sacred mediating symb
is an excellent fit for the ancient Indian Buddhist material when the
social "others" who must be incorporated or repelled are taken to be
women as a class. Her correlation of the presence or absence of sacred
mediating symbols with social systems of varying degrees of sociopolitical
openness provide a neat gradient upon which to situate three basic atti-
tudes toward female impurity present in or contiguous to the classical
Indian Buddhist tradition. Brahmanic treatises on dharma, in which the
impurity of women is viewed ambivalently as both dangerous and auspi-
cious, reflect a social context in which women are taken into the very
heart of male elite society, where they play a vital role. Lay supporters of
Buddhist monasteries would have displayed, to greater or lesser degrees,
the attitudes toward female blood found in such texts. Buddhist Vinaya
texts, on the other hand, reflect a social context in which women are ad-
mitted into the community yet kept carefully separate from elite males in
a parallel and legally subordinate subinstitution. There, they perform no
vital function for the male community. Buddhist lawgivers' blasé attitudes
toward menstrual blood reflect, in accordance with Douglas's scheme,
their acceptance of women's well-circumscribed participation in monastic
institutions. At the far end of the spectrum, certain Mahâyâna sùtras and
scholastic treatises advocate stricter asceticism and even austere forest-
dwelling, or tout a new pure land theology or vision of the bodhisattva
path that banishes women from the upper reaches of attainment (Ray
1994; Schopen 2004; Boucher 2008). In these, the female reproductive
body is often abominated and treated not as a source of life but as a filthy
thing that leads only to death and disorder. Each of these three cases-
Brahmanical law, Buddhist monastic law for women, and male ascetic re-
ligious discourse - express distinct views on female impurity, and are
broadly linked to a distinct socio-moral vision. Each represents a particu-
lar point on Douglas's spectrum of pollution belief and practice ranging
from the veneration to the abomination of female blood.
In my analysis, I push Douglas's anthropology to its limits by consid-
ering in-dwelling socio-ethical worldviews, and not only live communi-
ties, to be "social environments." This allows for several "social
environments" existing within the same physical environment, as when a
cloistered ascetic shares monastic space with a forward-thinking monastic
administrator. In his application of Douglas to the social attitudes of indi-
vidual mystics, Bagger makes a similar interpretive move, noting that "at-
titudes towards [social] exchange exert their influence at every scale.

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1 68 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Whole societies, institutions within society, and even relatively solitary

thinkers feel the pressures to ground their social preoccupations in nature
and reason" (2007: 44). Here I take Baggers point yet further by propos-
ing that several social subenvironments, each with their own analysis of
"nature and reason," can coexist even within the same individual. For in-
stance, the same monastic scholar might vest the topic of female blood
with minimal emotional energy when redacting the Vinaya in the
morning, but compose emotional odes to female foulness when writing
sūtra commentaries in the afternoon. Similarly, a Brahman boy raised to
view the female reproductive body as sacred but dangerous might learn to
abominate it when he later becomes a forest monk. In fact, social environ-
ments are rarely as monolithic, hegemonic, or absolute as the early
Douglas tends to assume. Most people pass between social subenviron-
ments routinely in the course of a day, as when they travel from work to
home, or from a single sex to a mixed sex grouping. The Buddhist social
subenvironments explored here are more a matter of moral-social
outlook than physical location. Each productive of a distinct view of
female impurity, they are segmentations of the larger Buddhist social
environment.

BRAHMANS ON FEMALE IMPURITY

It is common for practitioners and scholars of South and Southe

Asian Buddhism to deny the authenticity of ideas about female impu
found in Buddhist texts or contemporary practice or to attribute the
the influence of the purity-obsessed Brahman tradition (Sponberg
24; Hamilton 1995: 59-60; Gutschow 2004: 207; Young 2004: 179-
Tuladhar 2008: 69-74). Anyone who compares Brahman and Budd
discussions of female purity from the classical period (Maurya to G
dynasties, 321 BCE to 550 CE), as is done here, will, however, begin
doubt that Indian Buddhist views on female impurity can be dismiss
inauthentic or simply laid at the feet of Brahmanism. Brahman
texts: (1) attribute female impurity to the god Indra's wrongdoing,
the sins of women; (2) deal with female menstrual and birth impurit
temporary and washable; and (3) often declare women to be inheren
pure. In Buddhist contexts, on the other hand, the impurity of wom
presented as: (1) a symptom of women's past moral errors; (2) the so
of human impurity in general; and (3) a life-long state. These differe
render the attribution of Buddhist notions of female impurity to the ear
influence of Brahman ritual traditions untenable, especially given
ways in which early Buddhists criticized and self-consciously reject
other features of Brahman ritual tradition.

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 Langenberg: Buddhist Blood Taboo 169

According to multiple Brahman sources, menstruation in women

the result of the god Indra s ancient brahmanicide.13 After killing
Brahman son of the divine engineer Tvastr, the creatures of the wo
blame him and call him a Brahman-killer. Indra is desperate to r
himself of this great sin and runs to the women, who collectively agre
take over one-third of his moral burden in exchange for the boons of
tility and sexual pleasure.14 Thus, according to the dharmasütra
Vasistha, a Brahman text on dharma (religious duty),15 "Every mont
the sin of killing a learned Brahman becomes manifest. For that reaso
one should not eat the food of a menstruating woman. She has taken
the mark ( rüpa ) of Brahman-killing itself." 6 Menstruation, which
Buddhist sources is generally taken as evidence of moral misconduct a
ignorance, is here the result of the violent act of a male god. Women t
on this sin knowingly and voluntarily, after receiving in return two boon
of their own choosing: the ability to bear children and the capacity to
perience sexual pleasure. Vasistha makes clear that the sin responsible
the impure nature of menstruation is of an adventitious quality and n
intrinsic to women. Furthermore, while this mark of sin temporarily
vents the menstruating woman from participating in family and relig
life, at the end of her period of impurity, she sheds not only this borrow
guilt but her own sins as well.17
Brahman manuals provide specific instructions for coping with t
impurity that accompanies monthly bleeding.18 These texts are c
cerned primarily with the ritual status of the high-caste male, and w
the reproductive necessity of taking maximum advantage of female fertil
ty, believed to be at its peak during the days following monthly bleed
The menstruating wife is instructed to wear a stained garm
( malavadvãsas ) for three nights and to refrain from bathing, anoint

13This well-known story appears in the Taittirîya-samhitâ and is retold in various texts includ
the Mahābhārata and the Bhāgavata Purāņa.
14The Buddhist Pāli discourses know of this exchange, but present the women's choi
spiritually damning. See Ahguttara-nikãya 2.6.10. "Monks, womenfolk end their life unsate
unreplete with two things. What two? Sexual intercourse and child-birth. These are the two th
(Woodward 1979: 72, mentioned in Candraklrti 2003: 83).
Grhyasütras, Srautasūtras , and Dharmasūtras all fell under the classification of Kalpasūtra ,
Vedic ritual expositions supplementary to the Vedas themselves. Olivelle's editions of the Mā
Dharmašāstra and the Dharmasūtras (2003; 2005) are my primary sources for this section.
Vasistha Dharmasütra 5.6-10. Olivelle loosely dates Vasistha to the two-hundred-year pe
between 100 BCE and 100 CE (2003: 4-10, 375).
17 Vasistha 5.5, 28.4 (Olivelle 2003: 374-375, 456-457).
18According to Hüsken, the Vaikhänagrhyasütra and the Baudhäyanagrhyasütra (1.722-1.
give the most detailed information about menstrual practices, but the Àpastambagrhyasûtra ,
Hiranyakeéigrhyasütra , and the Vasisthadharmasütra also list some observances for menstruat
women (2001: 91).

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1 70 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

herself with oils or perfumes, touching the fire, laughing, and household
work. On the fourth day, she bathes and shampoos her hair, brushes her
teeth, and replaces the stained garment with a clean one. These actions
signal to her husband that her period of impurity is at an end, and that
she is once again sexually available (Hüsken 2001: 89-92). 19 In fact, the
period of three days (during which the wife performs a mild sort of
penance) and the ritual bath at the end of the three-day period remove all
trace of Indra's sin, even, according to some lawgivers, if the blood has
not actually ceased to flow.
While undeniably paternalistic and androcentric, these Brahman tra-
ditions place a value on female sexuality and fertility. A menstruating
woman's capacity to pollute the high caste male is feared, and yet female
bleeding is viewed with some ambivalence. Women, for instance, are de-
clared pure not despite monthly bleeding, but because of monthly bleed-
ing. The lawgiver Baudhäyana is not alone in commenting on the
menstrual flow's efficacy in periodically washing away women's sins so
that women "never become sullied," even in the case of rape, abduction,
or adultery.20 During sex, legitimate wives are pure by definition, except if
they are menstruating or have just given birth.21 In fact, the auspicious
wife, who is purified by her marriage ceremony and periodically cleansed
by her monthly flow, appears to represent to these authors a feminine
apotheosis of purity. Baudhäyana and Vasistha cite the same poetic ac-
counting of the durable blessings girls receive at marriage as a result of
their ritual union with three gods: "The Moon granted them purification;
Gandharva, a sweet voice; and Fire, the capacity to eat anything. Women,
therefore, are free from taint."22 Vasistha even suggests that a woman's
purity surpasses that of the back of a cow and the feet of a Brahman and
that she is "pure all over."23 Such statements are made with the goal of
perpetuating the ritual ascendency and robust thriving of upper-caste
patrilineages, not with the intention of uplifting women. They also have
the effect, however, of assigning a positive value to the female reproduc-
tive body, contrasting sharply with Indian Buddhist treatments of female
sexuality and fertility. In Brahman law, female impurity is both feared
and respected, reflecting Brahman society's acknowledgment of the
immense good generated by the outsiders in its midst. Here menstrual

19Of the dharmasütra authors, only Vasistha 5.6-5.7 includes any detailed instructions for
menstruating women.
Baudhäyana 2.4.4. Vasistha 5.5, 28.4. Manu 5.108.
Vasistha 28.8. Baudhäyana 1.9.2.
22Vasistha 28.6. Baudhäyana 2.4.5.
23medhyã sarvatah. medhya also means "fit for sacrifice." Vasistha 28.9.

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 Langenberg: Buddhist Blood Taboo 171

blood is a "positive mediator" (Douglas 1975: 289). A boundary-crossin

fluid redolent with the symbolism of divine power and fecundity, it
received the imprint of a social vision in which exchanges with an outs
group, in this case women, are regarded as fruitful and necessar
however risky.

FEMALE IMPURITY IN THE VINAYAS

Brahman legal texts express awe mingled with fear in legislating and
theorizing female impurity. Brahman lawgivers are composters of the
potent pollutions associated with female reproductive functions, isolatin
them, managing them, folding them back in, and then harvesting the rich
fruits they bring. They do not abominate female pollutants in symbolic
acts of rejection. Like the Brahman household, the Buddhist monastery i
also a place where women are incorporated, yet controlled. One might,
then, expect to find evidence of the veneration of female blood in
Buddhist law. Buddhist lawgivers, however, display neither fear no
respect in legislating the female body. According to Douglas's scheme,
this is so because, while Buddhist law includes and contains women as
does Brahmanic law, in its legal constructions, women are admitted only
into a peripheral and parallel institution where they do not perform an
function vital to male interests. In Buddhist Vinaya texts, female blood
neither abominated nor venerated, but treated as a thing of practical con
sequence but no real symbolic importance.
All of the sectarian Buddhist Vinayas, or monastic law collections,
contain at least one of the following: (1) a rule requiring nuns to wear
a menstrual cloth, with specifications about how this is to be don
(2) a rule forbidding nuns to keep communally owned menstrual
cloths beyond a certain period of time; (3) rules about how these ar
to be washed; and (4) rules barring women from the community who
menstruate either too much or not at all24 (Horner 1949; Roth 197
Hirakawa 1982; Kabilsingh 1988; Tsomo 1996; Heirmann 2002
Langenberg 2016). A Mūlasarvāstivāda rule, for instance, says that "Whe
a nun does not keep a special cloth to conceal her menstrual flow," it i
an offense requiring expiation.25 Given the immense importance assigne

24This section focuses primarily on passages found in the Mūlasarvāstivāda, Pāli , and
Mahāsānghika-lokottaravādin Vinayas, the three sectarian Vinayas that appear to have survived in
their entirety outside of the Chinese Canon.
Prayaścittika 144. Derge 'dul wa (Volume 9) Ta 20.a5. All Kanjur references are to chos ky
'byung gnas, bka' 'gyur (sde dge par phud), TBRC W22084, 103 vols. (Delhi, India: Delhi Karmap
Chodhey Gyalwae Sungrab Partun Khang, 1976-79).

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1 72 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

to female effluvia both in Brahman legal tradition and in nonlegal

Buddhist texts, the matter-of-fact tone and technical specificity with
which Buddhist Vinaya sources treat the matter of menstruation itself
invites comment. If the Buddha himself, to whom Vinaya texts are attrib-
uted, is being made to advise women on the practical dimensions of men-
strual hygiene in the manner of a middle school health teacher, one
wishes to understand why.
Tibetan translators have rendered the technical term for the special
cloth26 worn by menstruating nuns sme gab, literally, "a cover for sorrow."
The canonical commentary for the Mūlasarvāstivāda rule requiring
women to wear the special cloth provides a fuller context for this require-
ment, a possible clue about the reasons for the Tibetan translators' choice
of sme gab for the special cloth, and more information regarding the
intent behind the legislation of menstruation in the Vinaya. It reads:

For women, every month blood trickles out due to the degenerative
force of previous karma. Because of this, the lord advised (nuns) to wear
a special cloth ( sme gab) for concealing the menstrual flow. At the time
he said to "keep a special cloth" [the Lord knew] it was sure to fall if [a
nun] put it on and walked, so, at the same time he instructed [nuns to]
"keep a special cloth," he [also] said to "attach it with a string." Because
nobody stopped her, Sthūlanandā went out to beg for alms with blood
trickling down onto her calf. Brahmans and householders, seeing her,
asked, "Venerable lady, why is there blood on your calf?" She answered,
"If you don't know, ask your mother! Ask your sister! Ask your daugh-
ter!" "You insult all of our homes!" they complained, muttering and re-
criminating. At that time, the nuns told the lord, and the lord . . .
established a further precept: "If nuns don't keep a special cloth, it is an
offense." Even then, Sthūlanandā said, "What is called a 'special cloth'
(sme gab) is a cover for the unhappiness of women. What if I don't wear
one?" [The lord said,] "If you don't acquire one, 'it is an offense,' as
stated before."27

Here, Sthūlanandā ("Fat Nandā"), a feisty and coarse woman who

appears often in the Vinaya to exemplify how nuns should not behave,
fails to wear her menstrual cloth when she goes into the town of Šrāvastī

26 A passage from Guņaprabha's (1982) Vinayasütra , an important Vinaya digest from the
Mūlasarvāstivāda tradition, gives us the Sanskrit term for this special cloth, rajaścoda, which means
"that which conceals the menstrual flow." Vinayasütra 2.2343. http://gretil.sub.uni-goettingen.de/
gretil/l_sanskr/4_rellit/buddh/vinsutrc.txt (accessed July 23, 2015). In the Bhiksuņī-prakīrņaka of
the Mahāsānghika-Lokkotttaravādin School, the lord permits nuns rather to keep an āņicolaka (Pāli:
āņīcoļaka ) or "thigh-cloth" (Roth 1970: 309).
Derge 'dul wa (Volume 9) Ta 299a7-299b.6.

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 Langenberg: Buddhist Blood Taboo 1 73

to beg alms.28 She is menstruating, and blood runs freely down her leg
attracting the attention of Brahmans and householders. When they as
her about the blood, she crassly suggests they ask their female relatives. In
doing so, Sthūlanandā creates a public disturbance, forcing the Buddha
issue a further precept absolutely requiring all nuns to keep a menstru
cloth. Even then, rebellious Sthūlanandā objects, saying that the cloth
merely conceals the sorrow of women, something which she apparent
would prefer to put on display.29
This story makes it clear that avoiding public opprobrium is one im
portant reason for the legislation of nuns' menstruation. The medieva
Vinaya commentator Guņaprabha says very little about the requiremen
that nuns wear the menstrual cloth, but he does cluster it with sever
other rules. Nuns, he says, must keep a special garment for concealing t
menstrual flow, and tie it on with a string. They must wash and dye
from time to time. They must also keep a bathing robe ( udakaśatika
They may not have their soiled clothing washed by a washerman (but
must do it themselves). He then identifies this grouping of rules in a r
vealing way as pertaining to concealing or guarding the bhaga , or fema
sexual organ (Jyväsjärvi 2011: 603).30 Guņaprabha's mention of a legal
category called "guarded female sexual organs" ( guptibhahga ) suggest
that these rules are an expression of concern about managing the mona
tic bhaga , which, along with all of its products and functions, must
concealed, contained, and protected to the satisfaction of public opini
in order for the monastic community to function. Any hint that monastic
bhagas might be uncontrolled would make maintaining harmonious lay
monastic relations more difficult. As part of this task of rendering innoc-
uous the monastic bhaga , monastic lawgivers instituted laws for the ma
agement of nuns' menstrual blood.
In her comparative study of a rule from the Pāli Vinaya and Brahma
household ritual, Ute Hüsken provides further clues for interpreting
menstrual rules in Vinaya sources. Pãcittiya 4731 says, "When a nun us
the household cloth without relinquishing it, it is an offense requirin

28See Ohnuma (2013) and Schopen (2007, 2008, 2009, 2010) for further examples and analysis
Sthùlananda s transgressions.
29Other rules concerning the string used to tie the cloth and the illegality of hoarding communa
owned menstrual cloths are discussed at: Derge 'dul wa (Volume 1 1) Da 153a.7-153b5; Derge 'dul w
(Volume 9) Ta 20b.7; and Derge 'dul wa (Volume 9) Ta 299b.6-300a.6. See Cullavagga x.16 f
comparison.
30Vinayasūtra 2.2343-2.2348.
A pãcittiya is a minor type of offense requiring just expiation. The Mūlasarvāstivāda rule
discussed above, prayaścittika 144, is from the same class of rules.

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1 74 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

expiation."32 Hüsken suggests that the "household cloth" is a communally

kept menstrual garment to be used by visiting nuns for three nights and
then washed on the fourth and relinquished to another nun (2001: 86-
8 7).33 Hüsken proposes that the household cloth is, at least in the context
of this rule, a nod to the Brahman practice that requires the menstruating
wife to use a "stained garment" ( malavadvāsas ) for three days and wash it
on the fourth, signaling to her husband the return of her sexual availabili-
ty (2001: 89-90). She further argues that the original function of the
household cloth was ceremonial rather than practical, designed to set the
minds of ritually observant lay hosts at ease when potentially menstruat-
ing nuns came to stay (Hüsken 2001: 95). The "household cloth" might
have fulfilled a further function beyond communicating nuns' ritual ap-
propriateness to high-caste hosts. The Brahman "stained cloth" signals
sexual unavailability of the wife. Similarly, the presence of the household
cloth, guarding monastic bhagas , as it were, may signal nuns' sexual un-
availability, especially in a public setting.34
A requirement for nuns' admission into the order is normal menstrua-
tion. The Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya contains two passages in which the
community is forbidden to initiate women who either menstruate too much
or not at all.35 The woman who continuously menstruates is forbidden
because her lower garment is always soiled and attracts flies. The woman

32Āvasathacīvara is the Pāli term translated here as "household cloth." For similar rules in other
Vinaya traditions, see Tsomo (1996: 115) and Kabilsingh (1988: 314).
In the commentary of this rule, it is, yet again, Thullanandā (Sanskrit: Sthūlanandā) who annoys
her fellow nuns when she fails to relinquish the communally owned "household cloth" after the
prescribed three days. See Vinaya iv.303.20-iv.303.25 (Horner 1949, 3: 198).
Certain types of women were sexually unavailable in ancient India. One category of sexually
unavailable women comprised those "guarded" ( raksitã , guptä) by another man, whether father,
husband, or son. According to traditions like the Kämasütra , female ascetics were to be categorized
with sexually available women. Sanskrit dramas also portray female ascetics as morally suspect
(Jyväsjärvi). Though the many Vinaya prescriptions that place the nuns' community under the
guardianship and control of the monks' community indicate that Buddhist monks regarded
themselves, however unwillingly, as guardians of monastic women, it is likely that many in the
ancient context thought of Buddhist nuns as "unguarded," or at least as insufficiently guarded. If a
nun could be provided the legal standing of a menstruating woman, however, her sexual
unavailability would be significantly bolstered. In fact, as Hüsken points out, many of the scripted
behaviors of nuns resemble those of menstruating householder women (2001: 95-96). They are not
permitted to spin thread, go to the forest, sleep in the daytime, run, or busy themselves with
household affairs. They do not make fires or cook for men, and they do not eat throughout the day.
They do not comb or braid their hair, anoint themselves, or bathe outside of the prescribed times.
They do not serve water or fan their menfolk, or sit together with them in intimate settings. Creating
the vague, perhaps unconsciously recognized, outward impression of potential menstrual impurity,
and guarding the monastic bhaga with a Buddhist version of a Brahman wife's "stained cloth," may
have been helpful in protecting these socially marginal women against the very real possibility of
sexual assault.
35Derge 'dul wa (Volume 11) Da 152b.3-153a.2.

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 Langenberg: Buddhist Blood Taboo 1 75

who has no menstrual blood at all is also forbidden because her condition
encourages her to take on airs and behave arrogantly toward her elders and
betters. These and several other Vinaya texts assume a link between amen-
orrhea and spiritual attainment.36 Cessation with respect to menstruation
corresponds to cessation of desire. An ordinary unenlightened woman who
fails to menstruate is therefore in a position to claim spiritual attainments
she does not possess, or to tease older more accomplished nuns who still
menstruate. She is therefore barred from the nuns' community.
Furthermore, either condition- lack of menstruation or excessive menstrua-
tion - would feed the public perception that monastic bhagas might be ab-
normal, thereby alienating monastic women even further than they already
are from commonly accepted lay understandings of female virtue. This,
again, might potentially disrupt lay support for monastic communities.
Vinaya texts deal with menstruation in a practical manner with little
in the way of broad theorizing about female impurity, though a recurrent
theme does occur, at least in the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya , in which
menstruation is linked to past sin. The practical procedures prescribed by
the monastic law books reflect the monastic community's desire to main-
tain positive and fruitful interactions with the laity. In particular,
Buddhist Vinaya laws on menstruation evidence lawmakers' sensitivity to
the difficult position of female monastics, who must project womanly
virtue, proper decorum, and sexual unavailability when making their
alms rounds among the laity. Crafting rules regarding menstrual protec-
tion that enabled monastic women to comply outwardly to certain ac-
cepted standards of behavior are only apparently restrictive. In practice,
they would have aided the spiritual efforts of ancient monastic women.37
Although Buddhist menstrual law is responsive to the outward struc-
tures of Brahman menstrual law, it fails to adopt core aspects of Brahman
theory about the nature of menstrual blood, namely its dangerousness, its
association with auspicious female traits, its washability, its association
with Indra's sin (not that of women), and its purifying effect. Buddhist
menstrual law is constructive for Buddhist communities in that it formal-
izes menstrual behavior in a manner designed to harmonize relations
between female monastics and lay patrons. Formalizing menstrual proce-
dures also clarifies and strengthens relations between the male and female

36"In ŠrāvastI, because of not being without passion, as a result of past bad actions, from time to
time nuns bled from their genitals." Derge 'dul wa (Volume 11) Da 153a.7. "Not being free of all
passion, the nuns sometimes bled." Derge 'dul wa (Volume 9) Ta 299a7. "For women, because of
degenerate past karma, every month blood trickles out." Derge 'dul wa (Volume 9) Ta 299.a7-299b.l.
I make a fuller argument that Buddhist lawmakers were responsive to common and widely
accepted mores for female behavior in their attempts to carve out a viable social position for Buddhist
nuns in Langenberg (2013a).

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1 76 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

communities because regulating the behavior of monastic women safe-

guards male monastic communities, who can be blamed for nuns' offens-
es, from public opprobrium. In Vinaya law, female blood is not, however,
symbolically important. It is neither respected nor venerated. According
to Douglas's view, its relatively unmarked symbolic status reflects the
legally controlled and carefully regulated incorporation of women not
into the heart of male monastic society, but into its margins. The attitude
they display regarding female impurity indicates that monastic lawgivers
regarded monastic women's presence as adequately circumscribed, their
social significance modest, requiring no special additional management
via blood taboo.

FEMALE IMPURITY IN MAHÃYÃNA SŪTRAS AND

SCHOLASTIC TREATISES

It is not possible to generalize from Vinaya texts regarding the ritu

and symbolic status of female blood in classical Indian Buddhism. Oth
sorts of Buddhist texts contain quite different attitudes toward the female
body and its impurities than those displayed in Vinaya texts. Man
suttas/āgamas (texts putatively recording the Buddha's teachings) fro
the early canon causally connect the reproductive functions of the fem
body to the impurity of samsāric existence in a much more thorough
going fashion than the legal texts, which mention this idea only
passing. This sort of thinking is then elaborated and intensified in certa
Mahâyâna sūtras and scholastic treatises. Many (though certainly not al
Buddhist Mahâyâna sūtras and scholastic treatises express deeply negati
views of the female body and its products, abominating rather than vener-
ating, or merely managing, female reproductive blood. Douglas's theo
predicts that such views would emerge from social environments wh
boundaries must be safeguarded from female penetration, not a terrib
description for the sorts of elite male monastic or forest hermitage en
ronments that many scholars think produced Indian scholastic treatis
and Mahâyâna sūtras (Harrison 1987; Ray 1994; Silk 2002; Schope
2004; Boucher 2008).
The collection of textual passages that follows is by no means repre
sentative of the vast and highly diverse body of religious literature I a
grouping together under the laughably broad rubric "Mahâyâna sūtra
and scholastic texts." I am reading selectively from among source
cutting across a vast swath of highly diverse Buddhist texts, ignoring h
torical context, sectarian affiliation, philosophical point-of-view, and
many other vital features. The analytic structure afforded by Dougla
pollution theory renders this act of selective reading both sensible an

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 Langenberg : Buddhist Blood Taboo 1 77

defensible, for now. The thematic thread I pull out and display here
central to Buddhist notions of female impurity and closely pegged to
particular Buddhist social environment: elite, insular, male monasticism
either of the forest hermitage variety or the monastic university variety.
Before continuing with this section, one additional caveat bears ex
plicit acknowledgment. The texts considered here tend not to focus o
uterine blood specifically, but refer in broader terms to the impure wo
or impure female fluids. These texts also do not concern rituals or speci
menstrual practices, so the anthropological concept of "blood tabo
must be interpreted liberally if it is too be useful. "Blood" must be und
stood metonymically to connote the female reproductive body in gener
and "taboo" must be taken to refer to emotional attitudes and cognit
acts, rather than concrete ritual acts or behaviors. I do not consider the
adjustments to represent a misapplication of Douglas's theory sin
Douglas herself fully recognizes the cognitive dimensions of ritual actio
and the deep structural correspondence between categories of things.
In the Aggañña-sutta ("Discourse on Knowing the Beginning"), a di
course from the Pāli Dîgha-nikâya , the Buddha questions the purity of any
one born from the human womb and suckled at the human breast. He
goes on to illustrate through a story of human origins how the processes
and procedures of biological reproduction, including sex differentiation
and sexual behavior, first came to be as a result of the ever-increasing
coarseness and moral impurity of our remote ancestors. Eating coarse
food led to sexual differentiation, which led to sexual behavior, which led
to the building of individual dwellings, which led to domesticity and pre-
sumably (though it is not specifically mentioned) childbearing (Gethin
2008: 120-123). In rehearsing this story of origins, the Buddha discloses
the innate impurity at the core of "what is today [mistakenly] considered
proper practice," namely ordinary socially sanctioned human procreative
sex (Gethin 2008: 123). Pāli texts also contain a four-fold classification of
birth modes, of which spontaneous birth ( opapātikā ) without recourse to
egg, womb, or liquid medium is regarded as the best. In praising the
virtues of the remarkable nun Nandā, for instance, the Buddha notes that
she will be reborn in the manner of a goddess ( opapātikā ), and there, in
her new heavenly home, will finally gain freedom (Gethin 2008: 52, 277).
The long-ago fall into the coarseness and impurity of sexually differenti-
ated embodied existence can, in other words, be reversed through the
removal of moral taint.
The association of reproductive processes (which are often meto-
nymically conflated with female bodies) and spiritual blight, lightly
sketched in the canonical texts of the Pāli tradition, appears to build mo-
mentum and crystallize around certain tropes during the classical period

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1 78 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

of Indian Buddhism, when the major Mahâyâna sùtras and certain im-
portant works of abhidharma were produced. The cosmological impli-
cations of the belief that the womb and the sexual fluids deposited
there indelibly soil the body are played out directly and indirectly in a
variety of narrative and scholastic contexts. Scholastic literature such as
Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakośabhasya ("Commentary on the Treasury of
Metaphysics") and mainstream discourses such as the Sarvāstivāda Loka-
upapatti-sütra ("Sùtra on the Arising of the World") articulate the cos-
mological superiority of divine realms in terms of special types of birthing
(Teiser 2006a; 2006b: 94-95). In these realms, infantile gods appear spon-
taneously on the knees of their parents, eschewing intimate contact with
the mother's body. A new Mahâyâna Buddhist cosmology in which mul-
tiple Buddhas occupy multiple Buddha fields, each with its own enlight-
ening qualities, allows for yet other ways to imagine and express belief in
the three-way coincidence of womb, sin, and filth. With the exception of
the Buddha Aksobhya's realm, Abhirati, the pure lands that make up the
Mahâyâna cosmos are free of female inhabitants, which eliminates any
danger of impurity from women altogether (Harrison 1987: 78).38 In
Abhirati itself, the children are born without pain, and the women do not
menstruate (Harrison 1987: 78).
Additional articulations of the link between human impurity, sin, and
their origins in the female womb appear in scholastic texts. The early me-
dieval philosopher Candrakïrti's commentary on the philosopher
Aryadeva's Catuhśataka ("Four Hundred Verses") is a representative
example of this developing rhetoric.39 He comments satirically upon the
caste pretensions of Brahmans, born from the filthy womb just like any
leather worker or latrine sweeper:

Someone before he was born lived inside his mother's womb - which is
like an outhouse - between her intestines and stomach. Like a dung
worm, he was nourished by the fluid of her waste products. It is only
from ignorance that he thinks "I am pure." (Candrakïrti 2003: 180)

Candraklrti dispels the false idea that the body can exist in a pure state.
Bodies are impure not because of what people do or do not do with them,

38The longer Sukhãvativyúha, while not specifically describing Amitābha's realm as free of
women, records the great bodhisattva's vow that, upon reaching enlightenment, any women who hear
his name will "despise their female nature" and not assume another female body (Cowell 1969: 19).
The Lotus Sūtra also endorses this view (Hurvitz 2009: 146, 269).
39Compare Šāntideva's Bodhicaryãvatãra 8.60: "Is it that you do not like a dirty worm born in filth
because it's only tiny? It must be that you desire a body, likewise born in filth, because it is formed
from such a large amount!" (Šāntideva 1996: 93).

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 Langenberg : Buddhist Blood Taboo 1 79

but by their very nature. In particular, bodies are rendered indelibly

impure by the fluid-filled crucible in which they are formed. In short, a
human impurity can be blamed on the womb.40
In a variety of Buddhist texts from the classical and early medieval
periods, the sense of revulsion and moral terror that is to be associated
particularly with female parts and fluids is punched up several notches by
means of baroquely disgusting description (Wilson 1996). This poetry o
the foul appears to be a stylistic innovation of Buddhist literature from
this time, appearing in both mainstream and Mahäyäna literature. The
Garbhāvakrānti-sūtra ("Descent into the Womb Sùtra"), an early first-
millennium embryological text that survives in both Mahäyäna and
mainstream contexts, describes the female womb, source of all suffering
as: "a dark hole, very disgusting like a toilet, foul smelling, heaped up
with filth, home of many thousands of types of worms, always dripping
continually in need of being cleaned, vile, always putrid with semen,
blood, filth, and pus."41 Similarly, in his Siksã-samuccaya ("Compendium
of Teachings"), Sāntideva quotes a text42 in which the Lord Buddha at-
tempts to dissuade the king from indulging his lust, marveling at the be
sotted fools who, by uniting with woman's body, "have the same sort of
enjoyment as a worm on a dunghill. [The female body is] like a painted
pot of worms wheresoever it be seen, full of urine and ordure, or a skin
inflated with wind

clares. "Who penetrates a body which is but a receptacl

ceives like fruit to that which he does" (Sāntidev
mentioned above, in these types of passages, specific
strual blood or the blood of childbirth is replaced by
treatment of female filth. We encounter the idea that the womb or the
female body (womb and woman are sometimes conflated through synec-
doche) is full of feces, urine, vomit, and pus, in addition to blood. I inter-
pret this language to be the product of poetic license rather than
something of technical import. The basic message about the primordial
impurity of the female reproductive body is the same.44

40 Although his discussion details physical filth, moral filthiness is also implied, and Candraklrti
draws no significant distinction between the two, as is typical of classical Buddhist ethical thought. As
work on somatized conceptions of virtue in Indian Buddhism (what Susanne Mrozik has called
"physio-morality") has illustrated, Candraklrti's close linking of physical features and moral status is
traditional (Mrozik 2007; Powers 2009).
Tog Palace 'Dul ba (Volume 9) Ta 207b.6-208a.l.
Udayanavatsarãja-pariprcchã.
43See also Paul (1985: 25-59).
Sometimes, however, the equation made between moral taint, general bodily ooze, and female
blood is quite explicit, as in Candraklrti's comparison of the vagina to an outhouse entrance: "Even

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1 80 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Denigrating live women is not itself the focus of this distinctive

Buddhist discourse of female impurity. One might argue that no women
actually appear in them, only a strange phantasm of the female that oper-
ates as a powerful symbol of ignorance and sin.45 The moral state of the
male practitioner is always the real concern in Mahâyâna sùtras and scho-
lastic treatises. From the perspective of the Mahâyâna soteriologe the sin-
fulness of women with their loathsome wombs and filthy blood is
important mainly in that contact with impure female parts results from
and leads to the same sort of immorality that brought about their low
female embodiment. It also leads inevitably to yet further harmful
contact with the benighted female body during the process of rebirth. To
quote a literary text from the eleventh century on the same topic, "Those
attached to the yoni (female genitals) are reborn in the yonil "46 While
none of these statements are made in the context of ritual practice, the
metaphor of blood taboo seems apt, nonetheless. After all, in this view,
mere contact with reproductive female bodies, whose profound impurity
is contagious, leads to spiritual danger. While men's bodies and sexual
fluids are also described as impure, female impurity is viewed as both ab-
original and intractable, the ultimate source of all impurity, whether male
or female. This view is reflected in the Mahâyâna opinion that rebirth
into a male body is necessary for Buddhahood.
The Mahâyâna and scholastic texts cited here would have been pro-
duced within elite male ascetic communities of some description, probably
established monasteries with libraries, or possibly in forest hermitage set-
tings. The monks who wrote the Vinayas also lived in monasteries and
could also have read or even written these more androcentric types of texts.
The Garbhāvakrānti-sūtra , for instance, was definitely known to Vinaya
compilers, as one of its redactions is found in the Mūlasarvāstivāda
Vinaya. The transition from the Vinaya view to the sùtra view could
reflect the contrast between urban monasteries with connections to nuns'
communities and forest practice. This type of physical difference in loca-
tion is not necessary, however, to explain these contrasting rhetorics. The
difference in rhetoric could also reflect two physically contiguous or even
interpenetrating social spaces: a liberal environment in which monastic
women are accommodated and a more gender-exclusive, ascetic

worse are sores inside her body that were acquired through past karmie action and cannot be healed"
(2003: 166, 254). This passage is then followed by a reference to female monthly bleeding.
45Still, Buddhist autobiography and ethnographic work conducted in South and Southeast Asian
Buddhist countries shows that women's status and self-understanding has suffered collateral damage
as a result of this type of authoritative discourse on female impurity (see Gutschow 2004: 259-284;
Schaeffer 2004; Prapapornpipat 2008: 203).
Avadānakalpalatā 10.78a (in Ksemendra 1988: 331).

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 Langenberg: Buddhist Blood Taboo 181

environment in which they are to be rigorously excluded. One social en

ronment would have called for the mild, pragmatic, even protective a
tude we encounter in Vinaya texts, another for a fiercely suspicious a
defensive attitude toward women. Rapid migration between social sub
vironments, which is more a temporary change of social worldview th
of physical location, is not hard to credit. People would have made s
journeys every day in the ancient world, traveling from bedroom to m
ketplace, or from monastic lecture hall to alms rounds, as they do tod
when journeying from professional conference to child's birthday par
or from church to pool hall.
The discourse of female impurity found in Mahäyäna sūtras a
scholastic treatises not only reflects male Buddhist ascetic community
also participates in its construction. In fact, this discourse may have b
indispensible for summoning up cognitive boundaries when physical s
aration from women was not as absolute as many male ascetics wishe
The rhetoric of female impurity defines the goals of male asceticism o
and against the physical presence of women. In contrast to the Vina
texts, which reflect a desire to accommodate nuns in parallel institutio
Mahäyäna sútra and scholastic commentarial texts reflect a perce
need to patrol the boundaries of existence, guarding against female int
sions even on the level of cognition. The texts cited here can only be
scribed as abominating the female reproductive body, blood and all,
purity discourse that mirrors a social subenvironment that rigorously
cludes the female other. This is just as Douglas's theory predicts.

CONCLUSIONS

Brahman legal texts, in which the impurity of women is viewed

bivalently as both dangerous and auspicious, are part of a social co
in which women were taken into the very heart of male elite soc
Brahman priests depended on their wives to produce sons, mainta
purity of the household, and assist in certain ritual observances, al
and central concerns. This situation stands in sharp contrast to mo
communities in which, from the point of view of male legal scho
women played no vital role. As Douglas's theory predicts, Brahman
tion belief and practice, in which menstrual blood simultaneously p
and pollutes, composts rather than shuns female dirt. The Bra
context also resembles Douglas's description of societies in which
superiority is potentially undercut by female power. The highly art
ed pollution ideology and elaborate ritual practices that charac
Brahman religious life serve to ride herd on women, whose fema
stances and processes are simultaneously feared and valued.

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1 82 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Buddhist Vinaya texts, on the other hand, reflect a social context in

which women are admitted to the larger group but are not considered
necessary to the functioning of that group. They are kept carefully sepa-
rated from elite males in a parallel and legally subordinate subinstitution.
Buddhist lawgivers' condescending but still tolerant attitudes toward
menstrual blood are only mildly negative, reflecting, in accordance with
Douglas' scheme, their acceptance of women's participation in monastic
institutions. Although male superiority is undisputed in Buddhist monas-
tic contexts, male control of women is not as relentless, personally over-
bearing, or physically encroaching as it would be in a Brahman
household, as women are always kept at arm's length, giving rise to fewer
daily disputes and less need for intricate pollution practices as a tool of
social negotiation. According to Douglas's theories, such a situation
should result in minimal concern about menstrual pollution since no
daily conflict between male privilege and female access to power exists.
Indeed, such is the case. Female impurity is not regarded with ambivalent
awe, as fertility is neither coveted nor admired by monastic legislators. In
Vinaya texts, menstrual blood is matter-of-factly acknowledged and duly
managed; it is treated neither as an abomination nor as a sacred mediat-
ing symbol.
The abomination of the female body found in Mahâyâna sùtra and
commentarial literature represent the antithesis of the "composting reli-
gion" practiced by Brahmans. In Mahâyâna texts in particular, many of
which advocate renewed ascetic discipline and austere forest-dwelling, the
female reproductive body is abominated and treated not as a source of life
but as a thing that leads only to death and disorder. Such texts reflect an
elite ascetic environment in which male celibacy is rigorously defended
on every level. In this environment, women are regarded as a threat to the
highest spiritual aspirations of the community. Here, Douglas's theory
predicts a strong tendency to flag this tension between the authority of
the male ascetic tradition and the demonic female power to distract and
derail through an intense and unambivalent rhetoric of female pollution.
The doctrine of the foul blood-filled womb, source of all human impurity,
is just such a flag.
These three social subenvironments, reflected and maintained by the
range of purity beliefs in classical Indian Buddhism, were contiguous and
interpenetrating. Monastics lived alongside householders, who were their
neighbors, friends, and patrons. Liberal monks with a great interest in the
nuns' community would have shared monastic space with monks holding
a negative view of female embodiment. In some cases, these social suben-
vironments may have corresponded to distinct physical spaces. A forest
hermitage would have been no place, for instance, for a Brahman-style

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 Langenberg: Buddhist Blood Taboo 183

ritualist or monastic administrator, but would have been the nat

home of a rigorous male ascetic. In other cases, a single individual mig
have passed in and out of these three social subenvironments in a sin
day, enacting different purity beliefs in each. It is not hard to imagi
monk sharing in an observation regarding the impurity of the fem
body with a colleague, advising the nuns on where to wash their cloth
and blessing a young wife wishing for a son, all in one day (Langenb
2013b).
It turns out that elite monastics were not the passive mouthpieces of
hegemonic Brahman purity obsessions, but developed their own uniquely
Buddhist "blood taboos." Rather than constituting one monolithic idea
circulating automatically among elite groups of men, ancient Indian
notions of female impurity were dynamic and context-specific. Applying
Douglas's insights about the connection between pollution belief, reli-
gious categorizations of the world, and social exigencies makes it all the
clearer that, rather than being survivals of Brahmanism, Indian Buddhist
notions of female impurity were constructive of Buddhist community
and reflect the variety of social and institutional circumstances that
existed in Buddhist India. In some contexts, ideas of impurity were de-
ployed with a very light touch, primarily to the purpose of regulating the
external boundaries of Buddhist monastic communities. In other con-
texts, they inscribed indelible divisions into the community, separating
celibate men from fertile women at the level of ontology.
Douglas herself rarely made use of Buddhist examples, which she ap-
peared to reject as too complex for her theorizing.47 Douglas's early theory
stands up, however, to the complexity of classical Indian Buddhism, if
one's notion of society or community is expanded to include abutting and
interpenetrating social subenvironments as is done here. Douglas's thesis
that "attitudes towards exchange condition response to anomaly" allows us
to move beyond piecemeal interpretations, elucidating the broad structures
of classical Indian Buddhist pollution belief (Bagger 2007: 44). Her useful-
ness for explaining Buddhist purity beliefs, which have long gone unex-
plained or inadequately explained, shows that, while she herself may have
shied away from complex or disjointed cases in which "symbols anomalous
to one subsystem within a culture could find a securely structured place
within an alternate subsystem," her theory of pollution does accommodate
complexity, if put to the task (Buckley and Gottlieb 1988: 30-31). In the

47In "Self-Evidence," she mentions Thai animal classification systems, but ultimately leaves Thai
villagers, whose "Buddhism involves them in importations and transactions with other cultures," out
of her discussion in favor of the more bounded, small-scale societies of the ancient Israelites, the
Karam, and the Lele (Douglas 1975: 306).

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1 84 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Indian Buddhist example, one vast, sophisticated but more or less unified
tradition houses a variety of social subenvironments that exist side by side,
sometimes in the same monastery complex or village, nuns next to monks,
ascetics next to monastic bureaucrats, monastics next to noncelibate lay
supporters (Schopen 2004). Individual Buddhists may also have routinely
migrated between social subenvironments. Various modalities of Buddhist
pollution discourse were available for making manifest the social vision of
each subenvironment when necessary.
Some of Douglas's critics have charged her with sacrificing the partic-
ularities and context-specific meanings of religious systems on the altar of
system-building (Kirk 1980: 54; Buckley and Gottlieb 1988: 30-31;
Reinhart 1990: 21; Fardon 1999: 209; Klawans 2003: 95). Her usefulness
in illuminating basic features of the purity discourse of Classical Indian
Buddhism provides in itself a sort of rebuttal to this charge. A functionalist
theory such as Douglas's must always be re-evaluated in light of the local
fractures and fissures in religious life. It must be pegged as rigorously as
possible to details, lest it levitate to the status of mythical narrative. It is one
thing, however, to be suspicious of system building when the system has
already been built but may need to be refined, readjusted, partially disas-
sembled, or re-examined in higher focus. It is another thing to reject a sys-
tematic view in principle in favor of the bits and the pieces. In the Indian
Buddhist case, knowledge of the bits and the pieces with little sense of how
to assemble them into a larger pattern has led scholars to make claims
about female impurity in Buddhism that truly are broad, unsubstantiated,
and disconnected from the data. The most common of these claims
Buddhist views on female impurity to be external to Buddhism itself, the
product of cultural contamination from the surrounding Brahman milieu.
In contrast, Sponberg's typology of Buddhist attitudes toward women and
the feminine provide the basis for a more grounded and comprehensive
understanding of the modalities of gender in Indian Buddhism, including
beliefs about female impurity. Unfortunately, Sponberg also forces these
modalities of gender into a narrative of decline that collapses under exami-
nation. In helping to elucidate how the various views on the impure female
embodiment available to ancient Indian Buddhists fit together into a
whole, and how they relate to the range of ancient Buddhist social suben-
vironments, Douglas's seminal theories about pollution, society, and the
body advance our understanding of gender in ancient Buddhism past
Sponberg's typology.
The Indian Buddhist example given here does little, however, to
address the worries of Buckley and Gottlieb regarding the occlusion of al-
ternative or minority religious world-building in Douglas's early seminal
work. The specter of the blood-filled womb, or the promise of Buddhist

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 Langenberg: Buddhist Blood Taboo 185

monastic pragmatism, may well lead us to wonder about the particu

of how Buddhist nuns and female householders themselves interacted
with these intersecting discourses of female impurity. It is difficult to
know exactly how Buddhist menstrual beliefs were received and per-
formed by Buddhist women in the ancient period. One can imagine nuns
reveling in the freedom of the merely practical menstrual injunctions
found in monastic texts, at least within the four walls of their nunneries.
It also seems likely that a keen awareness of the inferiority and impurity
of the female embodiment was internalized by Buddhist women of the
ancient period, as it sometimes is by Buddhist women today. A group we
know even less about, but may enjoy imagining, are the Sthūlanandās of
the past, the women who rebelled against the very idea of female inferiori-
ty and sin. In her study of nuns in medieval Japan, which is based on
more complete historical information than is available in the Indian case,
Loris Meeks (2011) was able to demonstrate how women often ignore,
"talk past," work around, or differently interpret androcentric ideas about
female impurity. The frame of reference of the elite and androcentric
Indian Buddhist materials discussed here reveals little, however, about gy-
nocentric perspectives. The classical Indian Buddhist example does not
really challenge, in the end, the early Douglas's occlusion of the supple-
mentary or alternative worldviews of nondominate groups, although it
gives us chance to contemplate where that dark area begins and ends.
Despite this disappointment, the union of Mary Douglas's rich body
of work and classical Indian Buddhism's vast corpus can still be wel-
comed as a fruitful marriage of equals. Douglas's early theoretical frame-
work elucidates the various approaches to female impurity in classical
Indian Buddhism, providing a compelling view of their relationship to
complex Buddhist social structures. Additionally, the detailed application
of Douglas's ideas on pollution establishes beyond doubt that Buddhists
in India thought independently and in a uniquely Buddhist manner
about female impurity. From its own side, the Indian Buddhist example
puts Douglas's theories of ritual impurity, especially those found in
Purity and Danger and "Self-evidence," to the test, ultimately proving
their ability to accommodate and explain the pollution beliefs of nested
and interrelated social subenvironments. In ancient Buddhist India, three
social subenvironments - brahman-inflected householding, male celibate
practice, and gender-inclusive monasticism - coexisted and engaged in
exchanges moderated internally and externally by pollution beliefs and
practices. Neither anticipated by Douglas's analysis nor easily resolved
using Indian Buddhist materials, questions about female agency and al-
ternative female interpretations of impurity in classical India are sugges-
tively raised by the stubborn figure of Sthūlanandā. Sthūlanandā, who is

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1 86 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

best understood as a literary figure, not a historical person, challenges

scholars of Buddhism to understand her role in Buddhist discourse and
implications for Buddhist history. In her inimitable way, she also chal-
lenges Douglas herself across centuries and cultures, one witty woman to
another, raising the question of how (and if) her Durkheimian position
on the social roots of religion can be adapted so that it might better locate
and illuminate the alternative religious worldviews of the socially weak.

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