Laywomen in Buddhism’s earliest years: Clues to their significance in the Pali Canon

In the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, Mara reminds the Buddha, now approaching death, of his earlier words: ‘I shall not come to my final passing away, Evil One, until my bhikkhus and bhikkhunis, laymen and laywomen, have come to be true disciples – wise, well disciplined, apt and learned, preservers of the Dhamma …’ 1 The role of each element of this Fourfold Assembly in preserving and propagating the Dhamma is then described in exactly the same terms, including that of female lay disciples. I propose to explore the question ‘How significant were laywomen during the initial development and spread of the Buddha’s teachings?’ with particular reference to evidence in the Pali literature.

Context

A widely held, maybe traditional, view presents the area of northern India in which the Buddha was brought up, and where he subsequently taught, as an expanding world of urban and economic development, based on agricultural surplus, but a world nonetheless long steeped in Vedic civilization and its social values and hierarchies.2 Conversely, a more recent view has emerged that Kosala, the Buddha’s homeland, was in his time still on the eastern fringe of Vedic civilisation, which was not therefore as deeply entrenched as it was further west into its heartland, nor as it would become in later centuries.3 Recent scholarship points to evidence of a localised Vedic School developing alongside a variety of religious and philosophical movements, including ascetics such as the Jains and, eventually, the Buddha.4 5 The Kalama Sutta describes a wide and confusing variety of competing teachers.6 Furthermore, Alan Sponberg argues that the stimulus of urbanization and the rise of mercantile and artisan classes undermining the traditional social order created potential for new roles for women too.7

If, on the contrary, Brahmanism was already the major influence in society, it must be borne in mind that this was not necessarily the repressive, openly misogynist, Brahmanism codified in the Dharmasastras, Manusmriti from the 2nd century BCE onwards.8 Up to and including the heyday of Buddhism, in Vedic civilisation, both Early and Later Periods, women appear to have enjoyed social status, economic freedom – and spiritual capacity, as witness the Brahmavadinis, dedicated female scholars, and a number of notable female sages, composers of Vedic hymns, such as Sulabha Maitreyi.9 However, by the time the Pali Canon was being committed to writing, and following the usurpation of the Buddhist Mauryan Empire by Pusyamitra Shunga (185 BCE), Brahmanism had become consolidated across the north of the sub-continent, but with the increasingly misogynist character exemplified in the Laws of Manu, Dharmasastras, Manusmriti, where women’s rights to education, property, spiritual practice and independence of action generally were all removed.10

It follows that one must on the one hand be wary of ascribing to society in the Buddha’s lifetime the attitudes prevalent at the time when the Pali texts were finally written down, but on the other hand be aware of the influence of those same attitudes on the compilation and editing of the Canon. It is reasonable to conclude that the editors of the Pali Canon were led to reflect the attitudes of society at large – on which they were still dependent for material support. There must, therefore, be a considerable degree of conjecture regarding the situation of women in the Buddha’s time, but the early texts (Pali Canon and parallel collections) do provide clues at least.

Sponberg has proposed a useful technique for sifting through the apparent inconsistencies, ambivalence and downright misogyny that characterise many of the references to women in the Canon by suggesting that ‘what we find in the early Buddhist texts is not a single uncertain voice, but rather a multiplicity of voices, each expressing a different set of concerns current among the members of the early community.’11 He then proposes identifying a diversity of views comprising soteriological inclusiveness, institutional androcentrism, ascetic misogyny and soteriological androgyny, the last of these relating to the centuries following the Buddha’s lifetime and so outside the scope of this essay.12

The position of women in society in general

I. B. Horner begins Women Under Primitive Buddhism, thus: ‘In the pre-Buddhist days the status of women in India was on the whole low and without honour.’13 In later years, she qualified this somewhat,14 but, more recently, Ute Hüsken still talks of ‘an underlying view of women as inferior human beings, prevailing in classical Brahmin texts’15 with the implication that such views were similarly prevalent in the Kosala of the Buddha’s day.

In the Therigatha, poems ascribed to some of the pioneering Buddhist nuns, there are descriptions of the lay life left behind. Mutta is ‘freed from the three things that bent me over: the mortar, the pestle, and my humpbacked husband.’16 Kisagotami recalls her relationship with her husband’s family who treat her with greater or lesser respect as her life unfolds from relative poverty and low status, to high status as the mother of a son, to loss of position on the death of the child.17 Isidasi describes at length her dutiful behaviour, ‘a loving, virtuous, and humble servant, getting up early, and working tirelessly,’18 of no avail against the antipathy of her husband.

The former lay life of these women is depicted as subservient to the husband and his family, hard-working within the home, given value by the birth of a son but vulnerable to loss of status and rejection. There is a flavour of the later repressive attitude epitomized in the Brahminic Laws of Manu. However, this does not mean that the same was true of all households and all marriages: these nuns were escaping particularly unfortunate circumstances, not necessarily the norm if Kosala was indeed experiencing a period of social and economic change. Besides, there will always be unhappy marriages.

While women flocked to the Nuns’ Order once it was established,19 many more – who none the less identified themselves as followers of the Buddha – evidently did not. The Pali Canon contains a number of descriptions of marital and household harmony, some of which will be considered below, which, while often promoted as ideals (particularly from the husband’s point of view), seem to indicate a degree of contentment, even happiness, for the parties – who will, of course, tend to be, or to become, committed lay disciples: Upasika(f)/Upasaka(m). However, as we shall see, there are notable exceptions of female followers in ‘heretic’ households.

Clues to the Buddha’s own attitude to women

With regard to evidence of the Buddha’s personal attitude, as stated above, the Pali texts, as transmitted, must be read with caution and any conclusions treated as conjecture. However, Sponberg’s approach of identifying different voices may be of help in disentangling clues, bearing in mind the likelihood of unconscious as well as deliberate bias.20

Soteriological inclusiveness, as described by Sponberg, implies that progress on the Path leading to liberation is open to all equally, regardless of sex. The account of the foundation of the Nuns’ Order is riddled with ambivalent and outright misogynist statements, whether reporting genuine hesitancy on the part of the Buddha or reflecting the concerns of later, presumably celibate, male editors.21 However, in the midst of this, one exchange stands out as inclusive to a degree that might suggest a memory of the Buddha’s original words:

Then Venerable Ānanda said to the Buddha, “Sir, is a female able to realize the fruits of stream-entry, once-return, non-return, and perfection once she has gone forth?”

“She is able, Ānanda.”22

This is consonant with a similar attitude revealed elsewhere in the Pali literature: the Path to liberation is the same for any woman or man;23 the murdered Queen Samavati and her 500 women are all identified as having attained stream-entry or more;24 a laywoman can be an ornament of the Sangha equal to a monk, nun or layman:

These four competent, educated, assured, learned people – who have memorized the teachings and practise in line with the teachings – beautify the Sangha.25

Moreover, this voice of soteriological inclusiveness extends to the partners in the lay household:

Mendicants, if wife and husband want to see each other in both this life and the next, they should be equals in faith, ethical conduct, generosity, and wisdom. …26

For Sponberg, this inclusiveness is arguably ‘the most basic and also the most distinctively Buddhist attitude regarding the status of women’ to be found in the literature.27 However, arguing that there is no exact equivalence with the Buddha’s rejection of (hereditary) class distinction, he adds, ‘the willingness to include women appears to have remained bedded in a set of cultural assumptions about gender, assumptions that were never completely rejected.’28 Equality on the Path did not necessarily entail equality in society which was irrelevant to liberation.

This brings us to Sponberg’s second ‘voice’, institutional androcentrism, which he identifies as a somewhat later development, reflecting the need for the now established monastic community to maintain acceptability in the external society on which it was dependent29 and in which attitudes of male superiority were gaining or regaining ground – especially once its charismatic founder was no more.30 The suggestion is that the Buddha’s attitude of inclusiveness was replaced by one where women might follow the monastic path, but only within a regulated structure that preserved ‘conventionally accepted social standards of male authority and female subordination.’31 This would, to a considerable degree, account for an underlying imbalance in the conventional status of women and men portrayed in the literature, but how far might this reflect the Buddha’s own attitude?

Again, any conclusions are largely conjecture, but we cannot rule out at least a trace of unconscious bias in the historical Buddha who must, to some extent, have been a product of his time and place and upbringing. Karen Armstrong, speaking of the sages of the ‘Axial Age’, including the Buddha, would have it that ‘It was not that the Axial sages hated women; most of the time, they simply did not notice them.’32 Jan Willis suggests that the Buddha’s initial aim was to establish a monastic organization of celibate males for the propagation of his teachings and that therefore women were of secondary importance in the early stages.33 How much of a surprise to the Buddha, one wonders, was his step-mother Prajapati’s request for ordination and (although outside the scope of this essay) how much might this explain the hesitation in granting her request that is evident throughout the Cullavagga account?

In the Uggaha Sutta, the Buddha gives advice to his host’s daughters prior to their marriages. He enjoins them to rise before their husbands and retire after them, be obliging and polite, respect their in-laws and visiting teachers, be ‘skilled and tireless’ in their domestic duties, manage the servants and be prudent in financial matters.34 This is echoed in the Sigalovada Sutta, in the same terms:

A husband should serve his wife as the western quarter in five ways: by treating her with honour, by not looking down on her, by not being unfaithful, by relinquishing authority to her, and by presenting her with adornments. A wife served by her husband in these five ways shows compassion to him in five ways. She’s well-organized in her work. She manages the domestic help. She’s not unfaithful. She preserves his earnings. She’s deft and tireless in all her duties. A wife served by her husband in these five ways shows compassion to him in these five ways.35

There is reciprocity to some degree here, but the wife’s obligations are clearly more arduous and, seemingly, unquestioned. The social contract is unequal but treated as the norm without any suggestion of deliberate discrimination. Indeed, in the Sappurisa Sutta describing the four qualities of a good man,36 the monks are exhorted to be like a conscientious new bride – with clearly no irony intended.37

The recurring descriptions of wifely duty are evidence of an unquestioned social assumption regarding the role of women and, notably, its use as a simile (upama, a characteristic of the Buddha’s discourses) suggests it may have been an unconscious assumption of the Buddha too. That women themselves might disagree is not considered, except as a dereliction of duty.38

When Mallika, the wife of King Pasenadi of Kosala gave birth to a daughter, the Buddha is reported to have said in consolation that ‘a girl “may prove even a better offspring” than a boy.’39 This has, on a number of occasions been cited as evidence of the Buddha’s advanced views on the equality of the sexes and Horner suggests that ‘here a real Gotama-saying, and not monk-talk, has survived.’40 However, the rest of the verse makes it clear that a woman is superior when, a devoted wife, she honours her mother-in-law and bears a heroic son, so conforming with the stereotype of wifely virtue.41

Sponberg’s third voice is that of ascetic misogyny, for the most part related to the demands of male celibacy and ‘a shift in perspective away from the psychological soteriology of the earliest tradition back toward the purification soteriology of the ascetics’.42 He suggests this voice became more strident as monasteries became more autonomous and interaction between monastics and lay society reduced43 In other words, women were perceived as an external threat to cloistered male virtue where this had become synonymous with purity and chastity. That the texts, as finally committed to writing, should reflect this development is hardly surprising, but it may present a ‘red herring’ in the search for any evidence of misogyny in the earliest years, when it was the attitudes of lay society that mattered.

There are negative and indeed vituperative descriptions of women in the Pali Canon both in the Cullavagga account of the foundation of the Nuns’ Order and elsewhere. Women are ‘irritable, jealous, stingy, and unintelligent.’44 Women are at one and the same time the obsession of men and obsessed by men.45 This could be said to sum up the celibate’s fear for his vocation and supports Sponberg’s argument, as does the growing consensus that the passage in the Mahaparinibbana Sutta where Ananda is advised to avoid women is a late interpolation.46 It can fairly be argued that none of this throws much light on the Buddha’s own point of view.

Overall, a picture could be said to emerge of someone who had an instinct for inclusiveness although hampered by the expectations of society and, in all probability, some personal but unconscious assumptions about the status of women, but whose legacy was, in the succeeding centuries, subjected to the stresses and strains of a growing emphasis on masculine superiority and the threat of the feminine to monks’ virtue, specifically chastity.

Prominent laywomen
Householders and homeless alike,
Each a support for the other,
Both accomplish the true Dhamma –
The unsurpassed security from bondage.47

From the outset, the renunciants were dependent on material support from the lay community48 and, in view of the domestic arrangements outlined above, this would, in the majority of cases have meant the laywomen, certainly with regard to the daily alms round.49 In return, teachings were offered, and a mutually beneficial symbiosis developed. However, the contributions of lay followers to the propagation of the Dhamma could and did extend beyond providing for the basic needs of individual monastics in various ways including making substantial donations, setting an example of lay life according to the Buddha’s teachings and even transmitting those teachings to others. As we will see below, women featured prominently.

In the Sattama Vagga, the Buddha lists the ten foremost of his female lay disciples, including ‘as a donor is Visākhā, Migāra’s mother … who are very learned is Khujjuttarā …who are intimate is the householder Nakula’s mother…’50 Who were these women who were accorded such praise – and survived the editors?

Visakha, described as ‘wise, competent and intelligent’51 was a lay disciple of substantial independent means married into a household of ‘heretics’.52 She was nonetheless permitted to invite the Buddha to preach, resulting in the conversion of all concerned. Fabulously wealthy in her own right, she obtained the Buddha’s permission to offer eight special types of donation to the monastics, having convinced him of her spiritual motives,53 and provided the funds to build a vihara.54 55 Visakha is recorded as being a regular visitor to the monks (as were other laywomen),56 not averse to pointing out monastics’ shortcomings57 and even instigating changes to the Vinaya rules.58 It was perhaps due to her status as a donor as well as to her intelligence and good sense, that the Buddha evidently sought her advice on a number of occasions, including the resolution of a Dhamma dispute between rival factions of monks.59 60 While she features in a number of discourses relating to lay practice, particularly observation of the precepts,61 it is this mutual respect between teacher and disciple which is notable and illuminating, both as to the Buddha’s attitude towards at least some women – good sense is not dependent on gender – and as to the influence that it was possible for a woman to have in the preservation and development of the Dhamma and the Sangha.

Nakula’s parents are upasika and upasaka,62 depicted as the ideal of matrimonial harmony. The Samajivi Sutta, which exhorts the pair to be ‘equals in faith, ethical conduct, generosity, and wisdom’63 is specifically addressed to them as a couple. In other words, the teachings were available to both directly, rather than being conveyed at second hand to the wife later. In the Nakulapitu Sutta the husband, gravely ill, is first assured by the wife of her capability to run the household if he dies – we seem to be back with the traditional wifely virtues – but she then proceeds to reassure him that she will continue to see the Buddha, observe the precepts and cultivate serenity. She has trust in, and solid understanding of, the teachings and ‘she is independent of others in the Teacher’s instructions.’64 In other words, a woman is perfectly capable of developing and maintaining a strong practice of her own – as the Buddha goes on to confirm to her now recovered husband.

It must be added that the Nakulamata Sutta,65 regurgitates the familiar list of wifely duties seen elsewhere and does not sit well with the inclusive ethos of the other two suttas. A later interpolation maybe?

Turning finally to Khujjuttara, her story is told in the Dhammapada commentary.66 A slave sent to buy flowers for Queen Samavati, she hears the Buddha teach and is shamed into confessing to her mistress that she has been keeping money back for herself. Intrigued, Samavati sends her to listen to more discourses and repeat them to Samavati and her ladies, who all become lay followers and attain various stages of liberation.67 What is fascinating is that in the Khudakka Nikaya, the last collection in the Sutta Pitaka, the section known as the Itivuttaka or ‘Sayings of the Buddha’ is recognised as a compilation of Khujjuttara’s recollections of the Buddha’s teachings and is thus (apart from the poems of the Therigata) the only collection in the Pali Canon attributed to a woman, and a lay slave woman at that. The teachings cover ‘a wide range of the Buddha's teachings – from the simplest to the most profound — in a form that is accessible, appealing, and to the point.’68 Small wonder that according to the Ekaditu Sutta ‘A faithful laywoman with a dear and beloved only daughter would rightly appeal to her, ‘My darling, please be like the laywoman Khujjuttarā…’69

Conclusion

To return to my question: how significant were laywomen during the initial development and spread of the Buddha’s teachings?

Bearing in mind the lack of scholarly consensus, it is likely that the Buddha was teaching in an environment where either Brahmanism was not yet pre-eminent among a range of spiritual movements or at least the form it took was more liberal towards women than later developments. The Pali Canon displays attitudes towards women which range from inclusiveness on the spiritual (if not always the social or domestic) front, through androcentric and maybe unconscious assumptions of masculine superiority or feminine insignificance, to outright misogyny where the feminine is perceived as a disruptive threat to the purity of celibate monks. This range of attitudes may be attributed to the interests of different groups voicing their concerns as the contents of the Canon were transmitted over time.

It is not easy, therefore, to identify what represents the Buddha’s original attitude to women, but the material displaying an inclusive approach, at least as far as spiritual practice and attainment is concerned, may well come closest to representing his original and ground-breaking approach of a path to liberation open to all. The prejudices and expectations of the society on whose support the Sangha depended, coupled perhaps with a slight resurgence of unconscious personal bias, may have caused some modification of this attitude, in the surviving literature at any event. Nonetheless women, and specifically laywomen, were prominent as benefactors, paradigms and, indeed transmitters of the Dhamma, so it can be asserted with some confidence that laywomen were significant and indeed very influential in the development and spread of the Dhamma in the early years.

Abbreviations

  • AN Anguttara Nikaya
  • DhpA Dhammapada-atthakatha (Commentary to the Dhammapada)
  • DN Digha Nikaya
  • Iti Itivuttaka
  • Mv Mahavagga
  • SN Samyutta Nikaya
  • ThigTherigata
  • Ud Udana

Notes

  1. DN 16 at D ii 104 (https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.16.1-6.vaji.html)
  2. John Crook, World Crisis and Buddhist Humanism (New Delhi, New Age Books, 2009) pp 40 ff
  3. Alexander Wynne, ‘Review of Johannes Bronkhorst, Greater Magadha: Studies in the Culture of Early India.’ Published on H-Buddhism (July 2011),
  4. Alan Sponberg, ‘Attitudes toward Women and the Feminine in Early Buddhism’, in Buddhism, Sexuality, and Gender, ed. by José Ignacio Cabezon (Albany: SUNY Press 1992) pp 4-5
  5. L. M. Bausch, Kosalan Philosophy in the Kānva Śatapatha Brāhmana and the Suttanipāta. (UC Berkeley. 2015) Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2940b93h p 19
  6. AN 3.65
  7. Sponberg pp 4-5
  8. Pal Bhaswati, The saga of women’s status in ancient Indian civilization, https://doi.org/10.2478/mgrsd-2019-0012 Published online: 31 Jul 2019 pp 5-6
  9. Bhaswati p 2
  10. Patrick Olivelle ed. The Law Code of Manu (New York, Oxford University Press, 2004) Extracts as quoted in https://feminisminindia.com/2018/01/11/manusmriti-ultimate-guide-good-woman/ passim
  11. Sponberg pp 3-4
  12. Sponberg p 8
  13. I.B. Horner, Women Under Primitive Buddhism (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. 1930) p 1
  14. I.B. Horner, Women in Early Buddhist Literature: A Talk to the All-Ceylon Buddhist Women’s Association Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 30 November 2013 http://accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/horner/wheel030.html
  15. Ute Hüsken, ‘Gender and Early Buddhist Monasticism’ in: Saddharmāmrtam. Festschrift für Jens-Uwe Hartmann zum 65. Geburtstag. eds. Oliver von Criegern, Gudrun Melzer and Johannes Schneider, (Vienna: Arbeitskreis für tibetische und buddhistische Studien (Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde, Heft 93), p 218.
  16. Thig 1.11 (https://suttacentral.net/thig1.11/en/sujato)
  17. Thig 10
  18. Thig 15 (https://suttacentral.net/thig15/en/sujato)
  19. Janice D. Willis, ‘Nuns and Benefactresses: The Role of Women in the Development of Buddhism’, in Women, Religion and Social Change ed by Y. Y. Haddad and E. F. Findly (New York, SUNY Press 1985) p63
  20. An illuminating interview with Pragya Agarwal on The Spark, BBC Radio 4, 1 June 2020 deals with implicit/unconscious bias with (inter alia) specific reference to the patriarchal nature of Indian society, ‘a world not designed for women’.
  21. Analayo ‘The Foundation History of the Nuns’ Order’ Hamburg Buddhist Studies 6. (Bochum/Freiburg, Numata Centre for Buddhist studies, 2016) passim
  22. AN 8.51  (https://suttacentral.net/an8.51)
  23. SN 1.46
  24. Ud 7.10
  25. AN 4.7 (https://suttacentral.net/an4.7/en/sujato)
  26. AN 4.56 (https://suttacentral.net/an4.56/en/sujato)
  27. Sponberg p 8
  28. Sponberg p 11
  29. Iti 4.8
  30. Sponberg p 13
  31. Sponberg p 13
  32. Karen Armstrong, The Great Transformation (London, Atlantic Books, 2007) p xvi
  33. Willis p 61
  34. AN 5.33 (https://suttacentral.net/an5.33/en/sujato)
  35. DN 31 (https://suttacentral.net/dn31/en/sujato)
  36. Purisa m. (Pali): ‘male’, ‘a man’
  37. AN 4.73 (https://suttacentral.net/an4.73/en/sujato)
  38. AN 4.73 (when the bride begins to ‘kick against the pricks’)
  39. Horner p 20 quoting [SN 3.16]
  40. Horner p 20
  41. SN 3.16 (https://suttacentral.net/sn3.16/en/sujato) The child, Vajira, became queen of Maghada and the ancestress of Asoka, so one might surmise that a back-story has been created at some point.
  42. Sponberg p 21
  43. Sponberg p 24
  44. AN 4.80 (https://suttacentral.net/an4.80/en/sujato)
  45. AN 1. 1-10 (https://suttacentral.net/an4.80/en/sujato)
  46. https://discourse.suttacentral.net/t/what-the-buddha-said-to-ananda-about-women/5779
  47. Iti 107 (https://suttacentral.net/iti107/en/ireland)
  48. AN 4.60 (https://suttacentral.net/an4.60/en/sujato)
  49. AN 4.7 (https://suttacentral.net/an4.57/en/sujato)
  50. AN 1. 258-267 (https://suttacentral.net/an1.258-267/en/sujato)
  51. Mv VIII.18 (https://zugangzureinsicht.org/html/tipitaka/vin/mv/mv08/mv.08.18.khem_en.html)
  52. Horner, Women Under Primitive Buddhism p 348. Supporters of the ‘Naked Ascetics’, probably Jains.
  53. Mv VIII 18 (https://zugangzureinsicht.org/html/tipitaka/vin/mv/mv08/mv.08.18.khem_en.html)
  54. DhpA v53 (where her story is told at length)
  55. Roebuck V. J. Trans. The Dhammapada (London, Penguin Books Ltd. 2010) p 132
  56. SN 8.1
  57. Horner Women Under Primitive Buddhism p 352
  58. Mv III 13 1-2
  59. DhpA v160 (Roebuck pp 167-168)
  60. Mv X 5.9
  61. AN 3.70, AN 8.43, AN 8.49
  62. Who evidently practise celibacy at home (AN 6.16)
  63. AN 4.55 (https://suttacentral.net/an4.55/en/sujato
  64. AN 6.16 (https://suttacentral.net/an6.16/en/sujato)
  65. AN 8.48
  66. DhpA vv21-23 (Roebuck p 123)
  67. These are the murdered women in Ud 7.10 mentioned previously
  68. Thanissaro Bhikkhu, Translator’s Introduction to Itivuttaka (https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/iti/iti.intro.than.html#intro)
  69. SN 17.24 (https://suttacentral.net/sn17.24/en/sujato)

Bibliography

  • Analayo ‘The Foundation History of the Nuns’ Order’ Hamburg Buddhist Studies 6. (Bochum/Freiburg, Numata Centre for Buddhist Studies, 2016)
  • Armstrong K The Great Transformation (London, Atlantic Books, 2007)
  • Bausch L. M. Kosalan Philosophy in the Kānva Śatapatha Brāhmana and the Suttanipāta. (UC Berkeley. 2015) Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2940b93h
  • Bhaswati P. The saga of women’s status in ancient Indian civilization,
  • https://doi.org/10.2478/mgrsd-2019-0012 Published online: 31 Jul 2019
  • Crook J. H. World Crisis and Buddhist Humanism (New Delhi, New Age Books, 2009)
  • Horner I. B. Women Under Primitive Buddhism (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. 1930 Reprinted Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass Publishers PVT Ltd 1975)
  • Horner I. B. Women in Early Buddhist Literature: A Talk to the All-Ceylon Buddhist Women’s Association Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 30 November 2013 http://accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/horner/wheel030.html
  • Hüsken U. ‘Gender and Early Buddhist Monasticism’ in: Saddharmāmrtam. Festschrift für Jens-Uwe Hartmann zum 65. Geburtstag. eds. Oliver von Criegern, Gudrun Melzer and Johannes Schneider, (Vienna: Arbeitskreis für tibetische und buddhistische Stu dien (Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde, Heft 93)
  • Olivelle P. ed. The Law Code of Manu (New York, Oxford University Press, 2004) Extracts as quoted in https://feminisminindia.com/2018/01/11/manusmriti-ultimate-guide-good-woman/
  • Roebuck V. J. trans. The Dhammapada (London Penguin Books Ltd. 2010)
  • Sponberg A. ‘Attitudes toward Women and the Feminine in Early Buddhism’, in Buddhism, Sexuality, and Gender, ed. by José Ignacio Cabezon (Albany: SUNY Press 1992)
  • Sujato Bhikkhu https://discourse.suttacentral.net/t/what-the-buddha-said-to-ananda-about-women/5779
  • Thanissaro Bhikkhu Translator’s Introduction to Itivuttaka (https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/iti/iti.intro.than.html#intro)
  • Willis J. D. ‘Nuns and Benefactresses: The Role of Women in the Development of Buddhism’, in Women, Religion and Social Change ed by Y. Y. Haddad and E. F. Findly (New York, SUNY Press 1985)
  • Wynne A. ‘Review of Johannes Bronkhorst, Greater Magadha: Studies in the Culture of Early India.’ Published on H-Buddhism (July2011)

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