WOMEN AND THE BUDDHIST
RELIGION
The critical reading assignment focused on
Sharma a scholar who focuses on Ancient India
and how women in region during the period
coming after the 16th B.C chose to become
Buddhist nuns. This paper presents three
different journal articles by different authors at
the same time analyzing how each one of these
articles tackles the issue of women and the
Buddhist religion
The first article “Women in Ancient India” by
C.D Weerasinghe focuses on how Ancient
Indian women became Buddhist nuns. The
author of this article clearly gives an account of
how particular women bikkhunis and Buddhists
nuns chose to become lay-devotees of Buddhism
eventually becoming nuns. For instance, the
author gives a well written account of how
Budha’s step-mother and aunt joined Buddhism.
Here, he clearly presents the main reasons and
underlying circumstances necessitating the
decision made by this early Buddhist nun. In this
account, Weerasighe asserts that Gotami having
no one to look up to after loosing her husband,
she had no choice but to study Buddha’s
doctrines. This explains how she became the
first woman Buddhist and later Buddhist lay-
devotee albeit without being influenced by
anybody.
Weerasighe’s arguments tends to concur with
those of Sharma in the sense that they both agree
to the view that most women chose to abandon
everything and devout their lives to self-
deprivation in order to become Buddhists.
Additionally, his discussion tends to agree with
Sharma’s examination of seventy one female
nuns in the Therigatha where he asserts that most
of them joined the order not because of their
unsatisfactory marriage or family lives, but
because of the positive influence of Buddha’s
ways. In a similar way, Yasodhara chose to
practice deprivation and join Buddhism despite
her young and happy marriage to prince
Siddhattha. This was due to the appreciation and
influence of Buddha.
On the other hand, the second article, “Buddhist
Nuns in the Kathmandu Valley: An Evolving
consciousness” by Dr. Sarah Levine, the author
outlines some reasons why women of
Kathmandu valley opted to become nuns. The
author in this case is only concerned with the
period preceding and coming immediately after
the eighties. According to Levine (24),most
women in this region chose to become nuns
mainly because three major reasons.
Women joined Buddhism either because they
wanted to escape from the doctrine of marriage,
or they were seeking for a chance to further their
education or finally running away from marriage
and family problems. This view is definitively in
a sharp contradiction with Avandi Sharma’s
argument that new philosophical influences and
teachings of the new religion can be a major
reason for someone to completely abandon her
life for a life of complete deprivation as a nun
(Findly 98).
The author of the book, “Women’s Buddhism,
Buddhism’s women”, agrees with Sharma’s
views and opinion regarding women’s choice of
Buddhism as a religion. The author of this article
holds the claim that people choose to join certain
religions because of the doctrines, teachings,
practices and ways of life in those particular
religions. To support this claim, the author gives
an example of Europe where women are turning
to Buddhism not because of some socio-
economic forces, but because of their attraction
to Buddhist ways.
Some of these attractions include individuality
and the way of life as well as a satisfying religion
and humility in this religion. Thus, he argues is
because many of them feel disillusioned by the
“traditions” in Christianity. Though this article
uses different sources from those of the CRA,
the focus is merely the same though in this case
the geographical region shifts to Europe and
America. This kind of Buddhism though quite
different from the ancient one in India, the
course is merely the same and thus this article
supports the views in the CRA.
According to Arvandi Sharma, ancient Indian
women chose to become Buddhists nuns purely
due to the influence of Buddha’s positive ways,
teachings and the Buddhism doctrines. They did
not become nuns purely because of their
shortcomings in life such as familial misfortunes
or lack of place or someone to run to.
Sharma tries to support his course of argument
by analyzing the life stories of some of the
earliest nuns from the “Therigatha”, a summary
about the psalms of the nuns in India. In this
case, the author relies solely on religious poetry
verses from the Buddhist religion as his primary
source of data in the writing of his article.
These verses are virtually including live stories
of women who converted to Buddhism during
the period beginning from the 6th century B.C.
The author in this sense seeks to find out
whether women during this period chose to
become nuns because of the enlightenment of
the Buddhism religion, or because they were
escaping from miserable social and economic
past lives.
The author in this case seeks to test the relative
deprivation approach holding that women have
cultural and social reasons to turn to the new
religion rather than doing so on the basis of pure
enlightenment provided by the same religion.
The author asserts that women became
Buddhists in slightly different ways, but two
main factors were the main driving forces.
Buddhism as a religion was attractive to the
women and its doctrines appeared to be of great
importance.
Additionally, women chose to become nuns as a
result of the disgusting nature of the surrounding
society and its culture. They were thus seeking a
way out from this seemingly bad surrounding
society and culture. In relation to this, a majority
number of forty two cases out of a total of sixty
eight cases examined were found to have chosen
to become nuns because of the spiritual
attractiveness of Buddhism rather than for social
and economic problems (Findly 98).
For example, the next article ” Life of Women in
Ancient India” demythologizes the importance
and high status of Indian women in the ancient
society and gives several proofs to support its
opinion analyzing different spheres of life
(AbhiSays.com). However, the article “Four
Famous Female Figures of Vedic India”
describes lives of the most popular and
influential women of the Vedic period showing
their importance and role in that society (Das).
Thus, it argues with the previous article.
In “Women in Ancient India”, the author
analyses the lives of some of the early women
who join Buddhism as a religion. It is interesting
enough that the author starts with Budha’s step-
mother and aunt who were among the first five
hundred women to join Buddhism.
This was a very commendable approach by the
author because with this kind of analysis and
targeting such kind of target group of women,
the author was able to get a first hand account of
what early Buddhist women had to say about
their decision to join Buddhists and eventually
nuns. His choice of the analysis group is also
worth appraising.
He chooses to analyze groups of women from
wealthy backgrounds and who could not in any
way be influenced by socio-economic factors in
joining Buddhism as claimed by other dissenting
authors.
In regard to this, the women analyzed by the
author of this article concur with Sharma’s
argument that most women chose to abandon
everything and devout their lives to self-
deprivation and become Buddhist lay-devotees
or eventually nuns without necessarily being
influenced by familial or social problems. Some
of the women targeted by the author in this
article such as Yasodhara claim to have been
influenced by Buddha himself (Weerasinghe,
43).
The author further gives an account of a devout
daughter of a Savattia millionaire, an intelligent
girl who was able to grasp Buddha’s teachings
on the various occasions Buddha visited their
house for alms. According to the author of this
article, a girl from a wealthy family being
converted to a Buddhist lay-woman not only
implies that people can devout their lives to
complete deprivation by not only simply
following new attractive philosophies, but they
can also do so without any influence from socio-
economic forces.
The sources used in this article are far more
reliable than those used in the CRA since here,
the lives of the analyzed women can be traced
unlike in the psalms used by the CRA. The
conclusions in this article are identical to those
presented by Sharma in the CRA.
The author of the article “Buddhist Nuns in the
Kathmandu Valley: An Evolving consciousness”
presents her arguments from a different
perspective, era and using quite different sources
from those used in the CRA. Dr. Sarah Levine,
the author of this article presents quite different
points as the main factors behind women’s
choice to become Buddhists.
The reasons presented in this article include
avoiding getting married, seeking a chance to
further their education, and finally evading
problems of marriage breakages or being
widowed. This contradicts Avandia Sharma’s
argument that philosophical influences and
teachings of the new religion were the main
driving forces behind women’s choice of joining
Buddhism.
In conclusion, the five articles have greatly
broadened by knowledge concerning the
Buddhist religion. They have also given me a
new set of ideas concerning this religion as well
as the dissenting opinions held by other scholars
in comparison to those of the scholar in the
CRA.With the knowledge acquired from these
articles, I can now critique the CRA from
different perspective.
Works Cited
Das, Subhamoy “Four Famous Female Figures
of Vedic India: About Ghosha, Lopamudra,
Maitreyi and Gargi.” About Guide. About.
Hinduism. Web.
Findly, B. Women’s Buddhism, Budhism’s
Women: Traditional, Revision,
Renewal. Wisdom Publishes, 2000. Print.
Levine, Sarah. “Buddhist Nuns in the
Kathmandu Valley: An Evolving
consciousness.” Buddhist Himalaya: A Journal
of Nagarjuna Institute of Exact Methods 9.1&2
(1998): 489-99. Ccbs. Web.
“Life of Women in Ancient India.” Abhi
Says. India, 2009. Web.
Weerasinghe, C.D. “Women in Ancient
India.” Bodhi Leaves 47 (2010). BPS
Online. Web.
