Female Embodiment and Corporeality in Sanskrit Prognostication: A Study of the Bṛhatpārāśarahorā Śāstra

The connection between traditional Indian knowledge systems of astrology, medicine, and drama has been noted by scholars. Of particular concern for gender analysis is the reading of lakṣaṇas (bodily marks) that developed in astrology. The coded knowledge of astrology—the sharing of fundamental meanings with other Sanskrit knowledge systems—became a significant tool for gendered prognostication, which buttressed normative gender roles for men and women. In this paper, I attempt to unravel the code of lakṣaṇas given in the Bṛhatpārāśarahorā Śāstra, a text composed between the 7th and 9th centuries CE. The focus will be on the sections of the text concerning the predictions for women and the reading of the effects of the characteristic features of women’s bodies. From a decolonial feminist perspective, I reveal the way this corpus of knowledge, through somatic techniques and semiotic systems, was embodied by women while also examining the intersectionality of gender with other social hierarchies. The aim is to reveal the latent attitudes regarding gender and status that persist in the social fabric of South Asia through the continued cultural interest in astrology.