Controversies over Buddhist Nuns.

• Author: Heim, Maria
• Position: Book Review

By BHIKKHUNI JUO-HSUEH SHIH. Oxford: PALI TEXT SOCIETY, 2000. Pp. 576.

This book, a revision of the author's Oxford doctoral thesis, is an investigation of some of the textual puzzles concerning the monastic rules for nuns in the Pali Vinaya. The author provides annotated translations of certain portions of the Pali Bhikkhunivibhanga together with its commentary, the Samantapasadika. The Bhikkhunivibhanga was previously translated into English by L B. Homer, but the Samantapasadika has no English translation. Shih translates most of the rules that concern the two issues that figure most prominently in the nuns' rules: contact between nuns and men and rules of admitting new nuns into the Sangha. The second half of her book is organized into eight chapters of "thematic studies" that consider certain technical terms and problems raised by the rules.

Although issues of gender are difficult to avoid in a study like this, the author's primary interest is in historical change, and she posits some intriguing possibilities regarding the development of different strata of the Vinaya. While she focuses on the Pali version, she also engages in valuable comparative study of the other Vinayas: those of the Sarvastivada, the Dharmaguptaka, the Mahasamghika, the Mahisasaka, and the Mulasarvastivada. Discrepancies across the different recensions (which are more frequent and extensive for the Bhikkhuni Patimokkha than the Bhikkhu counterpart) may offer a new account of the historical development of this literature. On the question of whether the material that the recensions share indicates a common original or later contamination (as suggested by Gregory Schopen), the author maintains that the textual work required to determine decisively which process is more likely for each specific case has yet to be carried out. What her comparative analysis of the different Vinayas does lead her to hypothesize is that the Bhikkhuni Patimokkha and Vibhanga may be later than their Bbikkhu counterparts (perhaps even contemporary to or later than the Khandhaka), and that the Pali Vinaya as we now have it is later than the other Vinayas. The suggestion that the Bhikkhuni Patimokkha is not among the first compositions is a bold one, since all the Patimokkha rules are usually considered (somewhat uncritically) to be the earliest core of the Vinaya, and attributed to the Buddha himself. Shih posits that either the text was subject to redactional alteration and recomposed to...