Charming Cadavers : Horrific Figurations of the Feminine in Indian Buddhist Hagiographic Literature

In this study of sexuality, desire, the body, and women, Liz Wilson investigates first-millennium Buddhist notions of spirituality.

She argues that despite the marginal role women played in monastic life, they occupied a very conspicuous place in Buddhist hagiographic literature.

In narratives used for the edification of Buddhist monks, women's bodies in decay (diseased, dying, and after death) served as a central object for meditation, inspiring spiritual growth through sexual abstention and repulsion in the immediate world.

Taking up a set of universal concerns connected with the representation of women, Wilson displays the pervasiveness of an drocentrism in Buddhist literature and practice.