The doctoral dissertation, entitled “A Comparative Analysis of Prenatal Development Between Buddhist and Obstetrical Views” has three objectives: 1) to study Man's prenatal development in Buddhist views 2) to study Man's prenatal development in Obstetrical views, and 3) to compare the concepts of Man's prenatal development between Buddhist and Obstetrical views. This research employs documentary research and in-depth interview.

The results show that man consists of body and mind (consciousness). According to Buddhism, in the early age of Man, the genesis of humans was considered to be “Opapātika” (spontaneous birth). There is no currently available tool to prove this theory. Later on in the Buddhist human history, human genesis shifted to Jalābuja (womb-born creatures). This Buddhist concept requires pregnancy, during which a father cohabits and deposits sperm in a mother when the mother is Utunī (within the fertile window of the menstrual cycle.) Obstetrical knowledge can clearly explain and expand on this notion found in the Tripitaka and the Commentary. However, the Buddhist concept of Gandhabba, or the entering of “consciousness” into the new body, and the effects of Karma are not mentioned or explained in obstetrics.

The delimitation of the pregnancy timeline also differs. In obstetrics, gestational age starts at the first day after the Last menstrual period (LMP), but the human fetal age starts at the fertilization of the egg by a sperm. In Buddhism, the human body starts being alive at the Kalala stage, meaning that the embryo already has Gandhabba (consciousness) in the mother’s womb. The pregnancy period is about 9 - 10 lunar months. The comparisons of the issue of one-time, seven-day cohabitation of mother and father and the meaning of “Utunī” (a woman’s fertile window) and “Puppha” (endometrium or inner lining of the uterus) can be explained in obstetrical terms as follows: The father deposits sperm during ovulation leading to fertilization. The mechanism is that the endometrium (Puppha) starts to thicken during ovulation and continues to develop for 7 days after the release of the ovum (egg cell) to prepare for implantation of a possible fertilization (the first cell-zygote), with subsequent cleavage to blastocyst 7 days afterwards. At this point, the hatched blastocyst begins to implant in the endometrium, during which a small amount of bleeding (implantation bleeding) may occur and the pregnancy can continue. However, if there is too much implantation bleeding, the blastocyst cannot implant in the endometrium and the embryo sloughs off during spotting, so pregnancy does not occur.

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