Fully Ordained Nuns in Fourteenth-to-Seventeenth Tibetan Hagiographical Narratives

Abstract

Many contemporary efforts have been put to (re-)establish the order of fully ordained nuns in Tibetan Buddhism. Those who are in favor of such practice often refer to premodern Tibetan hagiographies to claim the existence of indigenous fully ordained nuns in the past. A series of female practitioners, indeed, appear as fully ordained nuns in such narratives dating from approximately the fourteenth century to the seventeenth century. Their monastic identities as such, however, are contested by Tibetan Buddhist masters because the methods of their ordinations, seemingly conferred by the male saṃgha alone, do not strictly follow the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya tradition, which is observed by the Tibetan Buddhists. In an effort to investigate as to how these female practitioners were fully ordained and the purposes of composing such narratives about their ordinations, this article revisits relevant hagiographies with particular reference to The biography of Chokyi Dronma, the Third incarnation of the WisdomḌākinī Sonam Peldren (Ye shes mkha’ ‘gro bsod nams dpal ‘dren gyi sku skye gsum pa rje btsun ma chos kyi sgron ma’i rnam thar) and a detailed exposition of The biography of Shākya Chokden (Shākya mchog ldan gyi rnam thar zhib mo rnam par ‘byed pa). It suggests that depicting these personas as fully ordained nuns serves the purpose of highlighting the hagiography subjects’ outstanding spiritual performance, while the recognition of monastic identity as such may not go beyond the context of these writings.