Therigatha-atthakatha. W. Pruitt. Pali Text Society, Oxford 1998. vii, 414 pp. £17.00 ISBN 0 86013 352 5.

Focusing primarily on Therigatha,1 the poems by the first Buddhist women, and correlating them with the compositions of non-Buddhist women mystics like Meerabai, Lal Ded, Muktabai, Janabai and Akka Mahadevi, this article is a study of spirituality, femininity and poetic expressions in a comparative mode. The article aims to address two major issues: First, it attempts to understand how the women mystics asserted their authority as the conveyers of divine message in a society which was essentially patriarchal and suspicious about (...) the credentials of feminine utterances. Second, the article seeks to delineate a certain womanizing of saintliness through the invoking of domesticity and the use of metaphors related to the female body and desire by these select women mystics as the denouement of a radical stance of an ascetic ‘feminine spirituality’, aimed at discovering transcendence even by retaining the conscious deploying of the components, often viewed as mundane. (shrink)

Poems of Early Buddhist Nuns. Translations of the Therigatha by Mrs C. A. F. Rhys Davids. Pali Text Society, Oxford 1989. xvi, 233 pp. £4.95.

The Commentary on the Verses of the Theris. William Pruitt. Pali Text Society, Oxford 1998. xiv, 445 pp. £22.00. ISBN 0 86013 363 X.

본 연구는 출가 동기를 「능동적 출가」와 「수동적 출가」로 분류하여여성수행자의 출가 동기를 사회적인 측면에서 분석했다. 「능동적인 출가」 동기로는, 붓다의 설법을 듣고 출가한 여성수행자들은 전통적인 바라문(승려계급)사회의 의례주의와 합리주의와의 대립, 사문(沙門)에 관한보수적인 가치관과 새로운 가치관의 대립, 금전으로 여성의 가치를 재어 구혼하는 남성들의 배금주의 등을 언급하고 있는 반면, 「수동적인 출가」 동기로는 근친자의 출가, 어린이의 죽음과 약혼자의 죽음으로 인한 출가 등을 볼 수 있는데,이는 여성의 자립을 용납하지 않으며, 여성을 성적대상과 출산의 도구로 여기던당시의 여성차별에서 비롯된 출가 동기인 것이다. 이처럼 능동적인 출가 동기에서는, 고대인도의 사회적 가치관의 변화와 (...) 대립을 볼 수 있는데 반해, 수동적인 출가 동기에서는 당시의 여성들에게 불합리했던 사회적 규범으로 인해 겪을 수밖에 없었던 고통스런 경험을 볼 수 있다. Thī 의 여성수행자 73명중 「능동적 출가」는 34명으로 47%가 「수동적 출가」로는 39명인 53%의 비율을 나타낸다. 이 비율은 고대인도의 여성들의 출가에는사회적인 요인이 영향을 많이 끼쳤음을 보여준다. 남성수행자의 출가의 동기가 능동적이든지, 수동적이든지 그들이 읊는 시의대부분은 교훈과 설법의 내용으로 사회지도자로써의 역할에 가치를 두고 있는것1)과는 대조적인 이와 같은 현상은 여성의 삶이 사회의 변화와 밀접한 관계가있다는 것을 보여준다. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Courtesans and Tantric Consorts: Sexualities in Buddhist Narrative, Iconograhy, and RitualRita M. GrossCourtesans and Tantric Consorts: Sexualities in Buddhist Narrative, Iconograhy, and Ritual. By Serinity Young. New York and London: Routledge, 2004. 256 pp.This book is a welcome addition to the growing literature on Buddhism and gender. It presents information and explores issues on this topic in new and innovative ways. It is also well researched and well (...) written. Part of Young's innovation is her use of Buddhist art and iconography, which she takes as seriously as textual sources are usually taken in Buddhist studies. Many of her most interesting suggestions and conclusions result from the seriousness with which she takes Buddhist art as resource for understanding Buddhism more accurately and completely. The other foci are clear from her subtitle: narrative and ritual. There is much less attention to the canonical and philosophical texts of Buddhism that are so often invoked in studies of Buddhism and gender.Studies of sexuality or gender often end up primarily discussing new information about women and new ways of understanding women's participation in or exclusion from religion. This study is no exception, which is not in any way to fault the book. Young's analyses center on ways that women have been both included in the Buddhist world and excluded from that world. Among the many varieties of Buddhism, Young primarily focuses on early Indian Buddhism and Tantric Buddhism, which have the most provocative teachings about gender and sexuality. In Young's analyses, we see how women participated in early Buddhism in ways that have not been recognized in most earlier scholarship and ways in which they are excluded from Tantric Buddhism and most later forms of Buddhism that have not always been acknowledged.Young's interpretations of the traditional life stories of the Buddha are extremely innovative and interesting. She argues that the future Buddha's rejection of women when he left his home and family must be balanced with his reintegration into the world of women before and during his enlightenment experience. She argues that this reintegration is evidenced especially in his acceptance of food from Sujata and in the help he received from the Earth Goddess during his trials with Mara. Young argues that many Buddhists throughout the ages have focused on episodes in his life that deal with rejection of women but have not fully taken in the implications of the stories in which women become important allies in the mission of the Buddha.The sources for early Indian Buddhism most invoked by Western scholars of Buddhism are textual. These textual sources present a very mixed picture of women's lot in early Indian Buddhism. On the one hand, the Therigatha and some stories from the life of the Buddha present a relatively optimistic picture of women's possibilities and their acceptance in the early Buddhist community. On the other hand, texts present a constant message of the importance of renunciation, and much of the recommended renunciation involves women. Texts written by and for monks frequently conflate women with sexuality and hold women responsible for wayward monks' sexual temptations. Against this widely known material, Young calls upon the evidence of early Indian Buddhist art to argue that the monks' anti-women texts [End Page 174] do not tell the whole story about women in early Indian Buddhism. The art work, which was much more important for tutoring largely illiterate Buddhist laypeople, consistently portrays women voluptuously and positively. This contrast between text and art is so great that recently, during a slide show in a class I taught on ancient Indian Buddhism, a student asked point blank how monks could possibly sanction the voluptuous portrayals of women common in early Indian Buddhist sanctuaries. I didn't remember Young's cogent analysis at first, but eventually did reply, using her analysis. The monastic establishment controlled the discourse that eventually became the texts of early Buddhism, but the lay donors controlled the visual representations that decorated the sites where Buddhism was preserved. The lay donors were more than happy to represent the fecundity and beauty of women, without whom there would be no future donors or... (shrink)