Garbha Upanishad English Pdf

[Geppe Warton]

TheGarbha Upanishad is a text that almost exclusively comments on medical and physiology-related themes, dealing with the theory of the formation and development of the human embryo and human body after birth. Paul Deussen et al. consider this Upanishad on the garbha or human embryo to be more like "a manual on physiology or medicine" than a spiritual text, with the exception of a passage which includes a number of statements about the foetus' awareness, including the assertion that the foetus has knowledge of its past lives as well as intuitive sense of good and bad, which it forgets during the process of birth.[6]

The text is notable for its style, where it states a proposition, asks questions challenging the proposition, thereafter develops and presents answers to those questions.[7][8] It is also notable for its attempt to enumerate and offer relative measure of human anatomy from foetus to adult stage of human life.[7]

The term Garbha literally means "womb" and "relating to gestation".[9] The text's title means "esoteric doctrine relating to gestation, womb, foetus". It is also called Garbhopanishad (Sanskrit: गर्भपनषत्).

The surviving manuscripts are incomplete, most of the text is lost or yet to be discovered, and the text is discontinuous, inconsistent between the manuscripts available.[7] The most studied version has been the Calcutta manuscript, which has four prose sections in one chapter.[7][10]

The four sections are structured in a form of dialectic style inquiry, where a proposition is presented, followed by a series of questions, and these questions are then answered.[7][8] For example, the Garbha Upanishad opens with the following,

Consisting of five, connected with each of the five,Supported on six, burdened with six qualities,Having seven constituent elements, three impurities, twice procreated,Partaking of fourfold food is the body.

Human body is composed of five elements, states the Garbha Upanishad.[3][11] Whatever is hard in the body is constituted of earth, whatever is liquid is of water, what is warm is from fire, what moves in the body derives from the essence of air, and the hollow in the body is the essence of space.[7] The earth principle provides it with support, the water necessary for assimilation of food, the fire essence for illumination, the wind principle distributes of substances with the body, while ether provides avakasha (room within).[8]

The five objects of sense are related to ear, skin, eye, tongue, nose. The related support system consists of the mouth to speak, hands to lift, feet to walk, tongue for tasting, nose for smelling, Apana for excretion, and the genitals for sexual enjoyment.[7] The body discriminates and knows by Buddhi (intellect), fancies and thinks through Manas (mind) and speaks with speech.[7][8] There are five tastes, representing food it needs for development, and these are sweet, saline, bitter, pungent and astringent.[7]

The Upanishad gives details about how the conception takes place in the womb and how it develops over a period of nine months.[11][13] After the union takes place in a particular (Ritu) season, the growth of the body in the embryo on the first day is a "nodule". It becomes a "bubble" by the seventh night; in 15 nights it becomes a "lump"; in a month's time the embryo is hard; by the end of two months, head is formed; parts of the feet appear by three months; stomach, the hips and ankle appear by the fourth month; the vertebral column shapes up by the fifth month; the face, nose and ears appear by the sixth month; the seventh month is when fetus is imbibed with Jiva or soul (Atman), in the eighth month has all body parts, and fully developed in the ninth month.[13] The fetus grows and is nourished by what the mother eats and drinks, through a vein, states the text.[13]

The Upanishad asserts its theory for the gender of the child, birth defects and the birth of twins. It states that dominance of male semen results in a male child while a female child is born when there is surfeit of female or mother's semen. When semen of both male and female are equally strong birth of a hermaphrodite occurs.[13][11] Birth defects are asserted to result when either parent is suffering from anxiety and trauma at the time of conception.[8][13] Twins of same gender develop when the shukra and shonita burst into two; however, when only shukra bursts into two or when the parents copulate often, then twins of mixed gender may be formed.[8][10] Development and birth of a single embryo is most common among humans, states the text. However, up to Quintuplets are observed among humans, asserts the ancient text.[8]

The text states that in the last weeks of its development, the fetus remembers the good and bad karma and being born anew through many births, resolves to remember Maheshwara (Shiva) and Narayana (Vishnu), resolves to study and practice Samkhya-Yoga after birth because all these bestow the reward of liberation. The fetus resolves, states the Upanishad, to meditate on Brahman after birth.[8][10][14] However, when the fetus is in the process of birth, states the text, the squeezing out of the womb causes it to forget its resolutions.[15]

Garbh means "womb" and Sanskar means "ethics" or "values" Parenting your child and teaching ethics inside the mother's womb can be the most blissful experience that any parent can imagine. The greatest evidence of Garbh Sanskar's spiritual journey is our historical background. During pregnancy, the mother maintains a healthy balanced diet that helps to develop a strong, healthy placenta that determines the birth weight and future health of the child in adult life.[16]

The purpose of Garbh Sanskar is to educate the child in the womb. It is believed that the education of moral, traditional and spiritual values begins right from the moment the foetus is conceived in the womb in Indian culture and, especially in Hinduism. Science has shown that babies in the womb will benefit from Garbhsanskar in early stages. The mother's relationship with the baby starts right from the moment of conception.[16]

In Ramayana, it was found that before the birth of Lord Rama during 'putra kameshti yagna,' the Agni devata gave King Dashratha 'payas' which can only be considered a kind of 'Garbh Sanskar'. There is also a well-known mythological narrative in Mahabharat about how Arjuna taught Abhimanyu to enter 'chakravyuha' when he was in the womb of his mother, Subhadra. This history, too, proves the fact that people also believed the idea of Garbh Sanskar during the mythological period. According to Charakacharya the mind of the foetus is completely assimilated with its parents, whatever stories, songs and garbh sanskar music a pregnant woman listens also affect the mind of her baby in the womb.[16]

The text then abruptly jumps to enumerating anatomy of a developed human body, likely from lost chapters of the manuscript. It asserts, states Paul Deussen, that in a human adult, "the head has four skull bones, and in them there are on each side sixteen sockets; in the body there are 107 joints, 180 sutures, 900 sinews, 700 veins, 500 muscles, 360 bones and 45 million hairs".[19] Further, enumerates the Upanishad, the heart of an adult human male weighs 364 grams, tongue weighs 546 grams, bile in the body 728 grams, semen produced is 182 grams, fat 1,456 grams, and excrement generated is uncertain in amount because it depends on what and how much the body eats and drinks.[10][18]

In Part 1 of this series looking into the issue of abortion from a Dharmic perspective, we addressed the question of who a Jiva is. Then in Part 2, we enquired into the role allotted to giving birth by the Dharmic traditions. We saw how human life is treated as very rare and important and how giving birth is perceived as a noble and meritorious activity. Now, in this Part 3 of the series, we will briefly look into different stages in the birth of a child and try to answer a question, which is central to any discussion on abortion: When does the Jiva enter the fetus?

Any discussion on abortion is not possible without understanding the stages in the birth of a child and in what stage does the Jiva enter the womb and enlivens the fetus. This is particularly important because, without determining at what stage of pregnancy will the fetus become endowed with the Jiva, i.e. at what stage will the fetus itself becomes a Jiva (i.e. a person), no analysis regarding the Dharmic implications of abortion can be made.

Similar accounts are also provided in various Smriti texts and Ayurvedic medical treatises. Yajnavalkya Smriti (Verse 3. 72-81), for example, says that during the sexual intercourse, the universal soul simultaneously grasps the five elements and mixing with them, the soul remains in the condition of a fluid in the first month, becomes a slightly hard lump in the second and develops limbs and organs of sense and in the third month and then begins to move. In the fourth month, the limbs become steady; in the fifth, the blood is produced; in sixth, strength, colour, nails, and hairs are produced; in seventh, the arteries, sinews and blood-vessels develop and the fetus becomes invested with mind and consciousness; and in the eighth month, skin, flesh and memory develops in the fetus.

Now coming to the central question about when exactly does the Jiva enters the fetus i.e. when can we consider fetus as being a living person, we must have to make a deeper analysis. It should be noted at the very outset that this is a very complex question and there are no easy answers. While from a biological point of view, as seen above, conception to childbirth is a simple linear process with more or less identical stages, the non-biological subtle process of Jiva self-identifying with the fetus and taking the fetus as its physical body is a much more complicated process.

To understand the journey of a Jiva into the womb, one must first have an understanding about what happens to a Jiva after the death of its physical body and what course of journey does a Jiva take after discarding the present body and before taking birth in a new body. In the present discussion, we would limit ourselves to the course of journey taken by the Jivas, who were humans before discarding their bodies.

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