The Foundation History of the Nuns’ Order

This book is a companion to Bhikkhu Analayo’s previous studies of the Genesis of the Bodhisattva Ideal and the Dawn of Abhidharma.

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In the present book he examines the foundation history of the Buddhist order of nuns, based on a detailed study of the canonical accounts of this event preserved in Chinese, Pali, Sanskrit, and Tibetan. Analayo investigates how the different and at times conflicting parts of the textual account of this particular episode gradually evolved to constitute the foundation history in the way in which it is now extant. His findings put into perspective the Buddha’s refusal to found an order of nuns as well as the prediction that the going forth of women supposedly spells decline for the whole Buddhist tradition, showing how these elements would have arisen and then become part of the foundation history.