Embryology and conception (garbha)

Experts on conception call the ten days (nights) from the appearance of menstruation the ritukala; some say ritukala can exist even when menstruation is not seen, and some count sixteen nights from its appearance.

A footnote defines ritukala as the time of conception or fit for it, and says intercourse should take place only while the woman is called ritumati; intercourse after that does not lead to conception and is therefore called blameworthy.

At the time a woman conceives she shows languor, fatigue, exhaustion, thirst and movement in the abdomen, by which it can be known that conception has just taken place.

When delivery is very near the woman has severe pain in the waist and back, and much kapha comes out with the urine.

During her period a woman should, like an ascetic, wholly give up violence and the other four sins and keep silence and similar vows; for three days she avoids garlands, ornaments and perfumed unguents, eats by day from an earthen dish, a leaf or her cupped hands, and sleeps at night on a bed of darbha grass.

For three days the husband does not touch her; on the fourth day she enters the water and bathes well, adorns herself and eats well, and the couple unite at night (see the procedure recorded for PDF p.93).

If the couple wish for a son, the woman is told to lie on her right side for one muhūrta after intercourse; if they wish for a daughter, on her left side.

A pregnant woman cared for by this rule through the nine months is said to deliver easily.

The child, boy or girl, is born in the ninth or tenth month; if the pregnancy does not come out within ten months, a disorder is to be understood.

The growing child causes the mother severe bodily pain; it may then be born safely, or die, or even take the mother's life with it, so it is said there is no suffering in the world like human birth.

After conception the embryo is said to become kalala in ten days, turbid in another ten days and firm in another ten; then in one month it becomes like a bubble and in another somewhat solid.

In the fifth month the flesh enlarges from the outside, in the sixth the limbs are formed, in the seventh skin, nails and hair appear, and in the eighth the opening of the head becomes distinct and begins to pulsate.

After union on the fourth day, the man's semen is said to reach the woman's blood (rajas) and mix with it in the womb; if conception is to occur, the beginningless, endless and conscious soul enters there by the force of its past karma.

Six capacities (paryāpti), namely intake of food, body, senses, breathing, mind and speech, are named as the causes of bodily growth; the mass of semen and blood joined with the soul attains them in turn within an antarmuhūrta and then takes the form of a body.

Until the seventh month the child is said to drink from all sides the pitta- and kapha-rich juices formed from what the mother chews, eats and drinks, and the stale fluids tainted by the smell of faeces, like a corpse in a pot of water taking in the water all around it.

After seven months a cord like a lotus stalk forms from the child's navel; the commentary says it is connected with the mother's heart, and from then on the child takes nourishment through it.

The sex of the child is said to depend on which seed predominates: more pure artava gives a girl, more semen a boy, and equality a napumsaka; the text adds that this follows the predominant karma of past lives, the chief cause according to the commentary.

In the seventh month hair is said to arise in the fetus.

A footnote gives a variant reading of the fifth-month line of verse 53.