Women in Early Indian Buddhism

Abstract

This volume is a broad-ranging comparative study of texts, sections of texts, and textual fragments that are concerned with women in early Indian Buddhism. The volume is based on texts from early Indian Buddhism, but with the inclusion of manuscript fragments and through comparative study the volume includes study of texts in Gāndhārī, Sanskrit, Pali, Chinese, Tibetan, and Sinhala. The book contains ten chapters and an introduction. Each chapter includes a translation of a selected textual extract, or manuscript fragments, and an ensuing study. Each of the extracts or fragments are concerned with women in some way. For example, the British Library Gāndhārī fragments are fragments of avadāna stories about women, the Mahāsāṅghika-Lokottaravāda Vinaya extract is from the nuns’ section, and the Saṃyutta-nikāya/Saṃyukta-āgama chapter focuses on the nuns’ discourses of the Saṃyutta/Saṃyukta.