As anyone following this blog will know I have been making a lot of translations recently of discourses involving the nun (bhikkhuni) disciples of the Buddha, and I will soon publish biographical materials translated from the commentaries concerning 13 of them.
The research on this subject led me to compile a table listing the 100+ known nun disciples of the Buddha, and where their teachings are recorded in the Discourse Collection of the Pāli Canon. This collection comes from just one section of the Pāḷi Tipiṭaka, there are many more listed in the Vinaya and in texts from other early traditions, which I hope to include in a future update.
I have put the work in the Reference section of the Ancient Buddhist texts website, where a previously made work listing The Foremost and the Eighty Great Disciples can also be found.
Although this is simply a listing I think it is quite impressive, and I doubt if most people realised there were so many nuns, not only who are known, but whose words we have recorded in the Canon, and so I hope it will go to help raise awareness of the important contribution played by women from the beginning of the Sāsana.
Possibly Related Posts:
- Publication of Old Javanese Metres
- New Album: Buddhas and Bodhisattvas on Level 1 at Borobudur
- Update of the Gaṇḍavyūha Reliefs at Borobudur
- Text and Translation of the Bhadra-cari-praṇidhānam
- Publication of Romesh Dutt’s Condensed Translations of the Indian Epics
