I. (A) Personal Details

Role Name Affiliation Principal Investigator Prof.SumitaParmar Allahabad University, Allahabad Paper Coordinator Prof. Rekha Pande University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad Content Writer/Author Dr J LimainlaAo Independent Research Scholar, (CW) Dimapur, Nagaland Content Reviewer (CR) Prof. Rekha Pandey University of Hyderabad Language Editor (LE)

(B) Description of Module

Items Description of Module Subject Name Women’s Studies Paper Name Women and History Module Name/ Title, and women, early description Buddhism,origin of monasticism,role of bhikkuni , rise of orders and decline of women, Tibetan rediscovery of ancient Module ID Paper-3, Module-4 Pre-requisites The reader is expected to have a knowledge about the religious movement in ancient India and its contribution to society Objectives To analyse the lives of women under Buddhism What were their attitude towards the sangha How did Buddhism help them find an alternative space? Keywords women,bhikkuni,sangha,therigatha, nuns and their life and the Sangha.

Buddhism and women

Dr J LimainlaAo

In recent years, feminism has created a virtual paradigm shift in religious studies. Yet the issue of women's religious statuses and roles remains more ambiguous and controversial in

Buddhism than it is for other world religions. 2500 years ago Buddhism created a revolution in India which is recognised in the history of religions as one of the greatest revolutions in

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humankind (Bapat, PurushottamVishranath :2500 Years of Buddhism). While the message of the Buddha led to a fundamental reorientation of attitudes towards life, one aspect which was not affected much was the gender question. The Buddha preached the quality of all human beings in an age when society was stratified on the basis of caste and economy. Further the

Buddha also preached that the way to enlightenment was not dependent on any other outside agency but was entirely due to the doing of the individual and his actions, Karma. The question of is a topic that briefly surfaced during the life of the Buddha and was later pushed to the background. To get a clear idea of the Buddhist religion and the question of gender, one needs to have a basic idea of the context and the different Buddhist societies that have evolved over 2500 years. The Buddha was a historical figure who lived in six century BC North India in the context of a rapid transition from a pastoral to an agrarian society characterised by the rise of agrarian surplus to towns. It was during this period that we see the rise of territorial units of administration known as the mahajanapdas and the

Republican states. It is an important fact that the Buddha was born in the shakya Republican state and therefore had democratic ideals. The Republican states were ruled not by monarchs or kings as 16 mahajanapadas were but were ruled by an oligarchy of the clan elders. Though there was a system of clan equality in these Republican states. The rise and rapid spread of

Buddhism led to the formation of the Sangha (Upinder Singh: A History of Ancient and Early

Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th Century). The Buddhist community was known as the Buddhist Sangha and consisted of four components of monks and lay men.

Does the Buddhist Sangha consisted of the monks and nuns known as the bhikkus and the bhikkunis respectively and the upasakas and the upasikas known as the layman and lay women respectively. The origin of the order of the nuns in Buddhism is also an interesting episode in the history of religions. The traditional Buddhist accounts narrate the story that the aunt of the Buddha, PrajapatiGautami requested the Buddha to start the order of the nuns and

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the Buddha was apprehensive that the entry of women into the order would lead to lack of focus and moral decay. Ultimately PrajapatiGautami led the group of 500 Sakyan women and they wore the robes and also shaved their heads and workers accepted into the sangha. Thus was born the order of nuns in the Buddhist religion. (Bechert, Heinz, and Richard Francis

Gombrich :The World of Buddhism: Buddhist Monks and Nuns in Society and Culture)

While some suggest that the core of Buddhist tenets contains egalitarian and feminist tendencies, others point out the perpetuation of male dominance and patriarchy in Buddhist thought or even criticizes the religion for playing a critical role in the subjugation of women in the society. Beyond general assessments of Buddhist gender ideologies, research also demonstrates the great diversity of women’s position in different traditions within the religion. tradition reserves the right to pursue enlightenment in monastic institutions exclusively for male. Most of the religious practitioners here were monks and the order of the nuns also died out in the first few centuries after the Buddha.(Warder, Anthony

Kennedy: Indian Buddhism.) In contrast, the tradition highlights the general

Buddhist wisdom of nondiscrimination through the concept of emptiness, which perceives the state of perfection as transcending any distinctions, including the distinction between the sexes. Situating particular Buddhist traditions in specific socio-cultural contexts, scholars have also explored the dynamics and complexity of gender ideologies and institutions resulting from the interactions between Buddhism and society, particularly in state-based societies marked by gender hierarchy.( Upinder Singh: A History of Ancient and Early

Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th Century).

Despite the relatively egalitarian gender ideology of Mahayana Buddhism and its institutional manifestation in female ordination, femaleness is still commonly considered an undesirable

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state, and transformation into men is often believed necessary for women to achieve ultimate enlightenment. Mainstream Mahayana Buddhism as practiced in the dominant societies of

East Asia serves as an example. The historical context for the larger presence of women in the minor tradition is the fact that in early mediaeval India was a very active movement and influenced all religious traditions and thus we see the large-scale presence of women in tantra. While the early centuries of tantra from the 7th to the 12th centuries AD saw the one hand, while the male-dominant ideologies and institutions of these societies are noted for distorting the gender-egalitarian core of 's teaching, Buddhist practice is also considered to perpetuate local patriarchal traditions in different forms to varying degree.

On the other hand, Mahayana also include positive feminine symbols, most powerfully represented by the Goddess of Mercy, who is adapted from an Indian male and is widely worshiped in East Asia. To a certain degree, women are also respectfully recognized for the roles they play in the religion, especially as devout nuns, supportive mothers, friends, and teacher. (Upinder Singh: A History of Ancient and Early

Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th Century).

In the history of Indian Buddhism, the period c. 200 BCE- 300 CE is associated with the emergence of Mahayana. The Mahayanists coined the term ‘Mahayana’ (the greater vehicle) and ‘’ (the lesser vehicle) though the term Theravada is used by older tradition and the term Hinayana is used only by the Mahayanists and is not well accepted. The origins of

Mahayana have often been traced to the older Mahasanghika School and the emergence of

Mahayana was thought of as leading to a major schism (split) in the sangha. In the Buddhist tradition, schism was associated with issues concerning monastic discipline, not doctrinal issues. Far from being a movement instigated by the devotional practices of the laity,

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Mahayana seems to have been a set of ideas and teachings that originated among a group of monks within the sangha.(Bapat, PurushottamVishranath: 2500 Years of Buddhism)

The idea of the Bodhisattva (wisdom being) is known to earlier Buddhism. Gotama himself is said to have been born as an ascetic named Megha or Sumedha in an earlier birth. He is described as having taken a vow to tread the path of in the presence of an earlier

Buddha named Dipankara, only to postpone his own enlightenment out of compassion for others. However, the idea of the Bodhisattva assumed greater importance in Mahayana. The highest goal in the older Buddhism was the attainment of nibbana and becoming an .

Mahayana considered this a lesser goal; the higher one consisted in following the path of a

Bodhisattva and attaining Buddhahood. This was emphasised because one would not strive for one's own enlightenment but after reaching the verge of enlightenment he would take a step back and announce the enlightenment to be in the society and strive for the well-being of all sentient beings. Thus the Bodhi meant the enlightenment and the sattva meant the essence- the combination of both these words meant the essence of enlightenment. The conduct and practices that formed part of the path leading to Buddhahood were not very different from those recommended in the earlier tradition. The several stages along the Bodhisattva path involved the attainment of a number of perfections known as paramitas. These were originally listed as six and later expanded to ten. They consisted of generosity (dana), good conduct (shila), patient forbearance (kshanti), mental strength (virya), meditation (dhyana), wisdom (prajna), skillfulness in means (upaya- kaushalya), determination (pranidhana), power (bala) and knowledge (jnana).

In the early Buddhist tradition, represented in the canon, the Buddha was considered a man, one among several beings who had attained enlightenment and become an arhat.

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However, he was definitely a superior man (mahapurusha), the unequalled teacher par excellence of the path to salvation. While the older tradition considered the Buddha as the ideal man and also represented him in literature in the same way, Mahayana had a different perspective on such issues. It increased the gulf between the attainments of an arhat and a

Buddha. It also introduced the idea of transcendent Buddhas and , who stood between nibbana and samsara. Mahayana philosophical ideas were represented in the texts of two major Buddhist schools- and . The founder of the

Madhyamakaschool was (2nd Century CE). His most important work was the

Mula- Madhyamaka- Karika (Root verses on the middle). The idea of Shunyata (emptiness) is an important feature of his work. It means that appearances are misleading, and that permanent selves and substances do not exist. According to Nagarjuna’s analysis, the ultimate truth, seen in the light of the entire teaching of the Buddha, is that the are empty, i.e., they do not exist per se. The ideas associated with the Yogacharaschool are contained in texts such as the Samdhinirmochana and the Lankavatara. This school is known as Yogachara because of the importance it attaches to the meditation as a means of attaining the highest goal. Yogachara gives a detailed account of consciousness. As in earlier

Buddhist thought, it talks of six types of consciousness, which consist of the inputs a person gets from his senses plus his conscious thought. Yogachara, however, identifies these as part of the active level of consciousness. Yogachara attaches great importance to the analysis of consciousness and asserts that mundane experiences are fundamentally constructs of the mind. This school is supposed to have been founded by a monk named Maitreyanatha.

(Eliade, Mircea: The Encyclopedia of Religion)

The most direct implication of Mahayana ideas at the level of popular practice was the worship of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas in the form of images in shrines. The older Buddhism

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had considered the veneration of and relics meritorious, but not essential. Mahayana, on the other hand, attached great importance to devotion to the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.

There was also a gradual shift from the veneration of symbols of Buddha Sakyamuni to the worship of images of many Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. This shift can be seen in the sculptures at various Buddhist sites.

Buddhism stands alone among its ancient Indian religious counterparts in leaving to posterity texts concerning women. What was the place and role of women in Buddhism during these centuries? Scholars points out that like earlier Buddhist texts, Mahayana texts too reflect negative as well as positive images of women and femininity. These texts reveal how men perceived themselves in relation to women. In some places, women are portrayed as mysterious, elusive, sensual, dangerous and weak in body and in mind. In other places, they are portrayed as wise, maternal, gentle, compassionate and creative. Women’s sexuality is seen as threatening to others and to their own spiritual aspiration, and there are several stories of women tempting and destroying monks. Although the path of renunciation was open to women, the texts frequently focus on women within the household and display an anxiety about the impact of women leaving their household to become nuns. Mahayana texts were divided in their opinion regarding women’s potential to follow the path leading to bodhisattva- hood. Although a few do suggest that maleness and femaleness were illusory and irrelevant categories, most of them present two alternative paths to attaining bodhisattva- hood for women. Some declare that a woman could not enter this path until she was re- born as a man. Others contain stories of miraculous sex changes.(Dutt, Sukumar: Buddhist

Monks and Monasteries of India: Their History and Their Contribution to Indian Culture)

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It should be noted that all the available information about the sangha during these centuries is about the sangha of monks. Evidence regarding the bhikkhuni sangha is largely confined to references to nuns as donors in inscriptions. Nuns made gifts individually and collectively, and the places mentioned in connection with collective gifts no doubt mark the places where bhikkhunisanghas were located. Monastic centres of nuns did exist, but they are not known by name or fame. All the great monastic centres known from texts and inscriptions were centres of male monasticism. Further, although nuns appear very often as donors at male monastic centres, there is not a single inscription of this period recording a donation to the bhikkhuni sangha. There seems to have been a gross disparity between the patronage enjoyed by the male and female monastic orders. (A L. Basham: The Wonder that was India)

In addition to the Theravada and the Mahayana traditions we also have the tradition in Buddhism. While the early tradition is followed in Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand,

Laos, Cambodia and southern Vietnam, the Mahayana tradition is followed in China and

Japan and Korea, North Vietnam and also in Taiwan. It is significant to mention the case of

Taiwan here because the largest number of nuns in the Buddhist religion come from two regions of Taiwan and Tibet. The Vajrayana tradition is sometimes seen as a part of the

Mahayana tradition but is largely composed of the Tibetan culture areas comprising of Tibet and the adjoining Tibetan culture areas in India, Nepal, Mongolia and parts of Russia.( Bapat,

PurushottamVishranath. 2500 Years of Buddhism) It is in this tradition that women enjoy a larger degree of freedom and many women have become nuns as we have a tradition of nunneries better known as the ani-Gompas as the nuns are known as the anis in contrast to the monks were known as the . We also have the tradition of the incarnate nuns and important female deities in this tradition. Another important aspect of is the relative freedom for women as we have a large number of tantric practices. The Dalai

Lama is working towards the granting of the full degree of doctorate or to the nuns and

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has also said that his future reincarnation maybe a woman. This highlights the very traditions regarding the status of women in Buddhist religion. Most of the nuns in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition joined the nunnery in the late teenage or at the early Middle Ages in contrast to the monks would join the monastery at a very young age. After the fall of Tibet in 1959 after the

Chinese invasion, The XIVth Dalai along with 100,000 of his followers fled to India seeking exile. In exile they rebuilt the monasteries are nunneries and continued the traditions and also revived some of the older practices. Special mention must be made of the Nalanda tradition and the establishment of the ancient Indian monasteries whose daughter monasteries were established in Tibet and destroyed and now we have the grand daughter monasteries.

Most of these monasteries and nunneries are established in Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka and are now following the traditions of the ancient Indian system. The nuns learn to read and write classical Tibetan and sacred texts and also follow the practices of one the four traditions of Tibetan Buddhism (Nyingma,Sakya,Kagyu and Gelug) to which they belong. Many of the nuns also have started reviving the ancient Buddhist tradition of argument or vada.(Powers,

John “Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism)

Like most forms of classification, this categorization, is at times spurious, as certain texts, such as the Dhammapadatthakatha, that contain both stories in which women are the main protagonists, as well as many passages that criticize the merits of women. Eleven texts from the ancient Indian period are apparently authored by, about, or concerned in some ways with women. The eleven texts are as follows:

Vinaya: During the ancient period of Buddhism in India, there were different schools or sects of Buddhism and each of these had its own literature, not all of which is extant.Vinaya literature is a body of work rather than a single text that is concerned with the rules that

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govern codes of conduct for Buddhist monks and nuns. Most of the differences between the schools and traditions and Buddhists concern two points-philosophical differences and differences in the rules. There are several hundred rules for both monks and nuns (although more for nuns than monks), ranging from those concerned with universal moral codes, such as abstention from taking life, stealing, lying, and so on, to more mundane rules, such as the correct etiquette for eating and wearing one's robes.

Therigatha: This work is a collection of poems in verse form, the authorship of which is attributed to the elder nuns, who lived during the lifetime of the historical Buddha. These verses by women from the ancient Indian period are among the oldest recorded voices of women from any historical period. They attest to women who renounced the world, lived in caves and in forests, and attained high levels of religious experience through their practice of the Buddha's teachings. As these are the only surviving texts authored by women in the ancient past, they have been retrieved and are being celebrated in the modern period to find support for religious reform of women in Buddhist societies.

SamyuttaNikaya: this is one of the most important texts of Buddhist literature concerning women. Chapter 5 of the Sagathavagga-samyutta (the "Connected Discourses with Verses"), which is volume 1 of the SamyuttaNikaya, contains short discourses about ten women. The chapter is called the Bhikkhunisamyutta and contains short stories on named women, some of whose stories are told in the Therigatha and others who are not otherwise recorded.

Apadanas: This is a collection of biographies of the disciples of the Buddha. Forty of the stories are about women disciples. The Apadanas are not published in English translation but

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they are well known in the Buddhist world where the translated into the different vernacular is in Sri Lanka and Myanmar.

Avadanasataka and the Divyavadana: These texts contain narrative stories of conversion, a selection of which have female protagonists. The two texts may have been, at one time, part of the vinaya of the Mulasarvastivadin School. Neither has been published fully in English, although a French translation of the Avadanasataka was published in 1891, and a few stories from the Divyavadana have recently been published in English.

Dhammapadatthakatha-: This text is a commentary on the well-known . (The

Dhammapada means in the footsteps of the dhamma and is a collection of short utterances that encapsulated the exchanges between the master and the disciple and are in form of verses)

The This text also contains narrative stories of women disciples. However, here, the focus is mainly on laywomen and gives a clear idea of the sangha. This text was translated and published in English in 1921.

Manimekalai: This is a Tamil text, published in English in the 1940s. Dated to the fifth century, the text tells the story of a woman who renounces life as a courtesan to become a

Buddhist nun. This text is one of the widely celebrated texts in Tamil and setting the Tamil country in the region of Madurai that was an important trading centre during the early period of the Christin era. In this text, one can form an idea of the lay Buddhist Society in the deep

South in contrast to most of the texts that the setting is on the Ganga valley.

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Paramatthadipani VI: This text is a commentary on the Therigatha and provides fuller accounts of the lives of the elder nuns. It is the sixth book of a larger commentarial compendium, which also includes a commentary on the Theragatha, the verses of the elder monks. The Therigatha section was published in English in 1998.

AnguttaraNikaya: This text of the Pali canon contains a list- in a section entitled "The Pre- eminent Ones"- of both nuns and female lay members of the Buddhist community who are foremost among their peers in such qualities as wisdom, teaching, faith, and recitation.

Manorathapurani: A commentary on the AnguttaraNikaya, this text recounts extended stories on women who held prominent positions among the community for various reasons. The section on women was published in 1893.

( A. L. Basham: The Wonder that was India, Bapat, PurushottamVishranath. 2500 Years of

Buddhism, and Eliade, Mircea. The Encyclopedia of Religion )

In addition to these texts, one of the sources for the study of women in early Buddhist Society are the sculptures and we may mention the important traditions in sculpture. Most of the scenes depict the events and life of the Buddha and one can get an idea of women mainly from the royalty, laywomen who come and make offerings to the monks and nuns. The traditions of sculpture that are noteworthy are the Sanchi,Bharhut and Amaravati. The first two represent the early period of sculpture when the representation of humans started during the first time. Before this period,ie the first century A.D., most of the representations of the

Buddha were in the form of footprints, an umbrella or an empty throne. However, with the rise of the Mahayana, the representation of the Buddha in anthropomorphic form started. In the earlier schools the sculptures are flat and two-dimensional while in the latter schools

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likeAmaravati and lastly in Mathura, the artist is accomplished mastery over the human form.

The representations are mainly concerned with the dream of Mayadevi, birth of the Buddha, the and the great going forth and finally the discourses in various places. Similar to the iconography we also find paintings and the best example of this paintings are in the

Ajanta Caves. Here too, the subjects are predominantly royalty.

The continuing debate on Buddhism and gender in Western scholarship has a multi- layered relationship to the textual scholarship of these early female scholars of Buddhism. The classification of value accorded the various texts certainly maintains their emphasis on Pali, much to the debate's detriment. However, equally unfortunate, the depth and breadth of their detailed work within the Pali corpus has not been sufficiently advocated or replicated. To the historian of Buddhism, looking at gender through the textual evidence, all texts are of equal value. The vinaya may stand out as manifestly influential and hegemonic for the tradition, but particularly when attempting to reconstruct an idea of gender relations or attitudes to women, texts more peripheral to the tradition are of equal importance. It is more likely here, than through the central texts, that subaltern voice can be heard and thus, a truer picture of the tradition as practiced can emerge. It is here that it should be more possible to see not just attitudes to women but instead reflections of (or, indeed, in real terms) actual historical women who practiced Buddhism in ancient India. The multiplicity of gender-based imagery of Buddha in ancient practice reveals how the images of the divine(s) may serve as an arena in which the inherent tensions and conflicts between indigenous cosmology and that of a world religion alternately confront and compromise each other.

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