This book breaks new ground in offering a number of Buddhist texts concerned with Mahayana Buddhism, a mine of information on women. The author has chosen this material, which has come down to us in Sanskrit and Chinese, with an eye to maintaining a high level of interest. The source material, nineteen episodes, of which nine are translated here for the first time, forms part of the great corpus of Buddhist literature. The ambivalent attitude toward women that has been apparent in Buddhist lands in all ages and epochs is well portrayed. On the one hand, woman was regarded as a danger, potential and actual, to a man's perilous progress along the way to welfare; and on the other hand, she was shown, as in the guise of the Naga princess who was nothing less than a Bodhisattva, on a footing equal to that generally claimed by man as his special spiritual prerogative. this study presents these two aspects without prejudice, fear, or favor.

Women in Buddhism: Images of the Feminine in the Mahayana Tradition, Diana Y. Paul, University of California Press, 333 pages, $27.95

Diana Y. Paul was born in Akron, Ohio and is a graduate of Northwestern University with a degree in both psychology and philosophy and of the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a Ph.D in Buddhist Studies. . . . Her short stories have appeared in a number of literary journals and she is currently working on a second novel, A Perfect Match. Currently, she lives in Carmel, CA with her husband and loves to create mixed media art, focusing on printmaking in her studio. As a Stanford professor, she has authored three books on Buddhism, one of which has been translated into Japanese and German (Women in Buddhism, University of California Press)