At the high point of the Indological interest in Indian texts, the Pali Buddhist corpus received an almost equal degree of attention as the Sanskrit Brahmanical/Hindu texts. However, I have been struck by the relative decline of Buddhist studies, especially in the Pali language, in Western academia in recent decades in comparison with the great focus on Sanskrit textual studies in the same region. This collection edited by Alice Collett is therefore important because it builds on the pioneering work of T. W. Rhys Davids, C. A. F. Rhys Davids, I. B. Horner, and Norman Hampson, among others in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In particular, it extends the work of Caroline Rhys Davids on the Therigatha and the in-depth exploration of women in Pali Buddhism by Horner. Collett's collection explores the Pali Buddhist corpus but also brings in other textual variants from the Chinese, Gandhari, Sinhala, and Sanskrit traditions. It includes chapters in which the authors translate and study texts, text fragments, or sections of texts that focus on women in some way or other. As a result, the individual papers are able to go over some familiar themes, bolster them, and also deepen our understanding of the broad contours that some historians in South Asian academia have delineated on the theme of women in early Indian Buddhism.Footnote 12
The comparative method used here enables us to see the internal differences over time and across textual traditions that can make for a more nuanced understanding of the general theme of women in early Buddhism. The range of possibilities is interesting. For example, the question of the setting up of the bhikkhunisangha during the lifetime of the Buddha itself has come in for contestation, and such a position leads us to think about chronological layers in texts and across texts. There would also be a need to maintain consistency in the broad strokes of narrative traditions that the compilers of the texts would have to sustain for acceptability within the narrative tradition.
On a personal level, a very appealing essay for me was the account of the ten bhikkhunis who were sought to be disturbed in their meditations by Mara, who as I have earlier suggested is very definitely portrayed as a “man” even if he is emblematic of other prototypal features. In Bhikkhu Analayo's essay on the Samyutta Nikaya's verses on Mara's disruption of the bhikhhunis' meditations, he always receives a fitting rebuff as he is “found out” by the discerning nuns for who he really is and what his intent is in disturbing the contemplative nuns. Mara attempts to distract the nuns using stock masculinist tropes—women's essential nature—as grieving for their losses, as objectified for their sexuality, or for their stupidity in renouncing the world and seeking the higher life, to which women are not entitled anyway. So, for example, Kisa Gotami, renowned in the Pali canon for her grief at the loss of her child, is told: “Why are you, having lost your child, weeping and with sad and worried face, sitting under a tree, are you searching for a man?” Bhikkhuni Vijaya is told: “Now you are young, I am also young, let us in this place enjoy ourselves together! Of what use is this meditative musing?” Soma the learned bhikkhuni is told: “The state wherein the seers dwell, is difficult to attain [for] one who has just two finger wisdom!” In all the cases, Mara gets a fitting reply and has to leave dejected at his failure to destabilize the bhikkhunis. What is clear from all of the verses and examples assembled by Analayo is the great difficulty bhikkhnunis would have experienced in accessing the same spaces that bhikkhus did for their meditations, such as forest groves, the spreading shade of a tree, or a riverside, because they were in the open and vulnerable to the disturbances of stray men.
Some of the essays are also able to nuance the somewhat flat rendering of the discussions on celibacy and the exaggerated portrayal of women's sexuality that earlier writings had emphasized by reconceptualizing both male and female desire; there are also examples of women accumulating merit for themselves through gift giving, even as the general principles of gift giving conform to the gender hierarchy in the social world.
But women's individual agency comes through quite marvelously sometimes, as in the account of Punna, the slave girl of Ananthapindika. Desperate to retain the hospitality to the Buddha, which the latter is declining, Punna is asked to make a request seeking a further opportunity to be taught the dhamma, and accept the three refuges, which the Buddha happily accepts to stay on for a while.
Together these essays provide a scholarly account of different lines of inquiry that may be pursued in exploring the way the Buddhist texts both write in and write out women's presence in the canon, reflecting real pressures emanating from the social world in which early Buddhism was located. Essays by Alice Collett and Jonathan Walters are drawn from larger works that are in preparation and are sure to carry forward the themes. We can look forward to them.
