Women in Early Indian Buddhism: Comparative Textual Studies.

AuthorWilson, Liz
PositionBook review

Women in Early Indian Buddhism: Comparative Textual Studies. Edited BY ALICE COLLETT. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. xii + 274. $74.

Alice Collett organized and edited this collection of essays to draw attention to the importance of women in ancient Buddhism. Her sense is that scholars have overemphasized certain texts, with the result that representations of the place of women in the early Buddhist record lack balance. When one considers that even today it is very rare to see women occupying the highest offices in religious communities, what early Buddhist women achieved is quite remarkable. That women left behind such a robust textual record from such an early period calls for celebration. "There is no textual record of named women from an ancient civilization," with the possible exception of ancient Egyptian queens, "that comes close to matching what we have in early Indian Buddhism" (p. 2).

The collection contains ten essays, the work of a diverse and accomplished group of scholars. In their training and institutional affiliations, the geographical range of the scholars included is notable, and there is also a good bit of diversity in focus. The collection has chapters focusing on different genres and types of text, and includes analyses of texts in five different languages--Gandhan, Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese, and Sinhala. As the book's subtitle indicates, comparative textual studies are central to its mission. Comparative textual study allows us to look at regional differences in relation to how women are perceived and fit into the pattern of Buddhist life as well as what difference gender makes in different early Buddhist schools.

Ingo Strauch provides a translation and study of a fragment of the Bajaur collection, a collection of nineteen birchbark fragments that were discovered in a region of Pakistan in 1999. The fragment in question is a Gandhari version of a sutra known in Pali as the Dakkinavibhahgasutta, which has a parallel in the Chinese Madhyana-agama. This fragment of the Bajaur collection contains a list of worthy recipients of gifts to the sangha and includes reference to the existence of the nuns' order during the lifetime of the Buddha. This is an important piece of evidence because some other versions of this list omit such a reference. Those other versions have been used as evidence by some scholars to surmise that the nuns' order was established only after the death of the Buddha.

Timothy Lenz looks at...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT