Dààidào bǐqiūnī jīng 大愛道比丘尼經
The Sūtra of the Bhikṣuṇī Mahāprajāpatī (translator unknown)
About the work
A two-fascicle anonymous Chinese rendering of an Indian sūtra on Mahāprajāpatī Gautamī 大愛道 (Skt. Mahāprajāpatī; the Buddha’s stepmother, the founding bhikṣuṇī of the Buddhist bhikṣuṇī-saṅgha). Translator and date unknown; the catalog tradition assigns it to “lost translation”.
Prefaces
No translator-attribution survives.
Abstract
The sūtra presents the canonical narrative of the founding of the bhikṣuṇī-saṅgha — Mahāprajāpatī’s request to the Buddha to be ordained, the Buddha’s reluctance, Ānanda’s intervention, the aṣṭa-gurudharma (the eight “weighty conditions” the Buddha imposed on the bhikṣuṇī-saṅgha), and the eventual ordination. The sūtra is one of the most controversial Buddhist texts in modern bhikṣuṇī-studies because of the aṣṭa-gurudharma: its prescription of female subordination has been variously read as historical fact, late-redactional interpolation, and as an institutional response to early-Indian sectarian rivalries (Sponberg 1992, Skilling 1994, Heirman 2002). The text’s inclusion in the Vinaya division reflects its disciplinary content rather than its canonical-sūtra status.
Translations and research
- Sponberg, Alan. “Attitudes toward Women and the Feminine in Early Buddhism.” In Buddhism, Sexuality, and Gender, ed. José Ignacio Cabezón, Albany: SUNY Press, 1992.
- Skilling, Peter. “A Note on the History of the Bhikkhunī-saṅgha.” World Fellowship of Buddhists Review 31.1 (1994): 29–49.
- Heirman, Ann. Rules for Nuns according to the Dharmaguptakavinaya. Delhi, 2002.
- Tsai, Kathryn Ann. Lives of the Nuns. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1994.