Hi there Marco. Very nice to see your name pop up. I wrote a paper entitled ‘Transgender adventures in the garden on the goddess’ a few years ago. It should be available online somewhere.
All the best McComas Get Outlook for iOS<https://aka.ms/o0ukef> ________________________________ From: INDOLOGY <[email protected]> on behalf of Marco Franceschini via INDOLOGY <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, March 15, 2026 9:07:48 AM To: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Gender change in pre-modern Sanskrit literature Dear friends and colleagues, I would like to sincerely thank everyone who responded to my question, both on- and off-list. I am deeply grateful to you all: in less than 24 hours, I received 25 suggestions – I am amazed by our group’s capacity for cooperation and mutual enrichment. Reading your replies, I realised that this topic can take on a scope I hadn’t considered, as it borders on and, at times, overlaps with related topics, such as androgyny, the male body as the normative body, the concept of āśrayaparivṛtti/parāvṛtti, normative literature (Kāmasūtra and Kāmaśāstras), Buddhist literature in Pāli, genderbending/emasculating rituals in Vedic texts – to mention just a few. Perhaps a dear friend is right who, off-list, writes to me that the topic deserves a panel at a conference or, perhaps, an entire conference... Over the next few days I will organise your suggestions and recommendations and send you a summary email with a bibliography. Thank you again. Warm regards to all, Marco --- Marco Franceschini ———————————--- Associate Professor University of Bologna Department of History and Cultures Personal web page<https://www.unibo.it/sitoweb/marco.franceschini3/en> Academia web page<http://unibo.academia.edu/MarcoFranceschini> — Il giorno 13 mar 2026, alle ore 21:46, Marco Franceschini <[email protected]> ha scritto: Dear friends and colleagues, one of my students is writing her undergraduate thesis on the theme of gender change in pre-modern Sanskrit literature. So far, we have identified the following cases: - Ila/Sudyumna-Ilā (Rāmāyaṇa, Bhāgavatapurāṇa, Viṣṇupurāṇa, Vāyupurāṇa) - Bhaṅgāsvana (Mahābhārata) - Śikhaṇḍin (Mahābhārata) - Mūladeva (Vetālapañcaviṃśati) - Rūpāvatī (Divyāvadāna) - Arjuna (Mahābhārata) As for studies on the subject, we have been able to identify only these three: - M. Bloomfield, On the Art of Entering Another's Body: A Hindu Fiction Motif - N. Brown, Change of Sex as a Hindu Story Motif - R. Goldman, Transsexualism, Gender, and Anxiety in Traditional India I would be grateful for any additional suggestions you might wish to provide. Thank you in advance for your suggestions. Best wishes, Marco --- Marco Franceschini ———————————--- Associate Professor University of Bologna Department of History and Cultures Personal web page<https://www.unibo.it/sitoweb/marco.franceschini3/en> Academia web page<http://unibo.academia.edu/MarcoFranceschini> —
_______________________________________________ INDOLOGY mailing list [email protected] https://list.indology.info/mailman/listinfo/indology
