The path of practice as taught in ancient India by Gotama Buddha was
open to both women and men. The texts of early Indian Buddhism show that
women were lay followers of the Buddha and were also granted the right
to ordain and become nuns. Certain women were known as influential
teachers of men and women alike and considered experts in certain
aspects of Gotama's dhamma. For this to occur in an ancient religion
practiced within traditional societies is really quite extraordinary.
This is apparent especially in light of the continued problems
experienced by practitioners of many religions today involved in
challenging instilled norms and practices and conferring the status of
any high office upon women.
In this collection, Alice Collett
brings together a
sampling of the plethora of Buddhist texts from early Indian Buddhism in
which women figure centrally. It is true that there are negative
conceptualizations of and attitudes towards women expressed in early
Buddhist texts, but for so many texts concerning women to have been
composed, collated and preserved is worthy of note. The simple fact that
the Buddhist textual record names so many nuns and laywomen, and
preserves biographies of them, attests to a relatively positive
situation for women at that time. With the possible exception of the
reverence accorded Egyptian queens, there is no textual record of named
women from an ancient civilization that comes close to that of early
Indian Buddhism. This volume offers comparative study of texts in five
different languages - Gandhari, Pali,
Sanskrit, Chinese and Sinhala. Each chapter is a study and translation,
with some chapters focusing more on translation and some more on
comparisons between parallel and similar texts, whilst others are more
discursive and thematic.
Alice Collett is a Fellow of the Arts and
Humanities Council of Great Britain (AHRC) and Lecturer at York St John
University. She has worked in different universities in North America
and the UK, and published several articles on women in early Indian
Buddhism, including two which look at reception history and review the
modern scholarly debate on the subject. She is currently working on a
monograph entitled Pali Biographies of Buddhist Nuns, for which she is in receipt of an Arts and Humanities Research Council award.
Contributors:
Bhikkhu Analayo, Professor of Buddhist Studies at the Sri Lanka International Academy in Pallekele.
Alice Collett, Fellow of the Arts and Humanities Council of Great Britain (AHRC) and Lecturer at York St John University
Amy Paris Langenberg, Instructor of Religion at Auburn University, where she also teaches in the Women's Studies Program.
Timothy
Lenz, Acting Associate Professor in the Department of Asian Languages
and Literature at the University of Washington, working on the Early
Buddhist Manuscripts Project, headed by Richard Salomon
Karen Muldoon-Hules, visiting lecturer for UCLA and an instructor for UCLA Extension
Ranjini Obeyesekhere, a lecturer in Anthropology at Princeton University where she
taught courses in South Asian Literature and Culture
Ingo
Strauch, since 2005 he has been working in the project "The Bajaur
Collection of Kharo??h? Manuscripts", where he studies Buddhist
manuscripts from the early centuries of our era
Jonathan S.
Walters, Professor of Religion, George Hudson Ball Endowed Chair of
Humanities and currently Director of Global Studies at Whitman College,
Walla Walla, Washington, USA
Contributors
A Note on Non-English Words
Abbreviations
Introduction
Chapter 1-The Bajaur Collection of Kharosthi Manuscripts
Mahaprajapati Gautami and the Order of Nuns in a Gandharan Version of the Daksinavibhangasutra
Chapter 2-The British Library Kharosthi Fragments
Behind the Birch Bark Curtain
Chapter 3
Pali Vinaya
Re-conceptualizing Female Sexuality in Early Buddhism
Chapter 4
Mahasamghika-Lokottaravada Bhiksuni Vinaya
The Intersection of Womanly Virtue and Buddhist Asceticism
Chapter 5
Anguttara-nikaya / Ekottarika-agama
Outstanding Bhikkhunis in the Ekottarika-agama
Chapter 6
Samyutta-nikya / Samyukta-agama
Defying Mara - Bhikkhunis in the
Samyukta-agama
Chapter 7
Therigatha
Nanda, Female Sibling of the Buddha
Chapter 8
Apadana: Theri-Apadana
Wives of the Saints: Marriage and Kamma in the Path to Arahantship
Chapter 9
Avadanasataka
The Role of Brahmanical Marriage in a Buddhist Text
Chapter 10
Dhammapada- atthakatha/Saddharmaratnavaliya
Women in Medieval South Asian Buddhist Societies
Bibliography
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