Bodies and technologies of reproduction

This roundtable brings together scholars working on a wide range of materials, cultures and periods to discuss the body and technologies of reproduction. The reproductive body is the site and technology of much religious and spiritual practice in East and South Asia. Narratives of embryology—whether physiological and saṃsāric or spiritual and transcendent—inform such practices. Bodily practices are often understood in relation to reproduction and may directly impact procreation. This roundtable focuses on how the reproductive body informs religious practice and narratives of bodily procreation. The roundtable features contributions on the placenta as the source of mortality in Shangqing Daoism, embryogenesis narratives in Epic and Purāṇic literature, the Daoist body as a self-contained site of asexual reproduction, the Indian alchemical *Rasaratnākara* on embryo development and procreation, spiritual embryology in haṭha yoga, embryology and cosmology in Chinese female alchemy, and childlessness and ontogenesis in Bengali (Baul) songs of *sādhanā*.