Buddhism in India

The Dhamma 83

Even when the Bhikkuni Sangha was formed, still the most

praise was given to the women householders who had supported

the Sangha, rather than to the bhikkunis. The ideal for women, as

far as the Buddha himself was concerned, was the householders’

life. Women were essential to maintain the household, and a mod-

ified and humanised form of a patriarchal family is supported. The

ideal is depicted in the Sigalavada Suttanta:

A husband should serve his wife as the western quarter in five ways;

by honoring her, by respecting her; by remaining faithful to her; by

giving her charge of the home; and by duly giving her adornments.

And thus served by her husband as the western quarter a wife should

care for him in five ways: she should be efficient in her household

tasks; she should manage her servants well; she should be chaste; she

should take care of the goods which he brings home; and she should

be skillful and untiring in all her duties...(Digha NikayaIII, 30).

Thus, at one level the Buddha did not challenge the developing

patriarchy, and in the Jatakas we can find extreme forms of the

belief that women are inherently deceitful and sexually abandoned.

However, the forms of patriarchy maintained by the Dhamma were

still far different from the life ordained for women in the

Manusmritiand other orthodox Brahmanical texts. Two notable

points are absent from the Buddhist texts. Nowhere is the ideal of

pativrataendorsed; while women are often depicted in Buddhism

as lustful and deceitful, nowhere is the control of men over them

endorsed as it is with Manu. The relationship between husband

and wife proclaimed in the Sigalavada Suttantais one of inequality,

but it is also one of reciprocity and there is no hint in it of women’s

inherent need for male control.

The second and most crucial difference is that in the end the thesis

of anatta, the denial of an essential ‘self’ extends to women’s selves

also. In the debate regarding their admission to the Sangha, the

Buddha himself is forced by Ananda to admit that there is nothing

in woman’s essential nature that makes them different from men,

in regard to worldly life or spiritual life. Thus, the crucial question

asked by Anand is whether women are capable of going into

the ‘homeless life’, of becoming enlightened, becoming Arahats

(Kullavagga, 322). And the Buddha replies that they are, and opens

up the Sangha to them.

doctrines of the time reflected the emerging patriarchal relations,
they did so in very different ways—and in turn impacted on these
in very different ways. Buddhism admitted women into the Sangha,
with a socially inferior status but as spiritual equals to men, and
also gave much less social legitimacy to male control within the
family (here as elsewhere I am indebted to Uma Chakravarty; see
especially her essays on Brahmanical patriarchy; Chakravarty
1987; 1993).
As we have seen in Introduction, women were admitted into the
Sangha only reluctantly, and then with a large number of rules
that symbolised their subordination. In explaining these rules, the
Buddha is reported as saying, in the Mahavaggaof the Vinaya,

Just, Ananda, as houses in which there are many women and but few

men are easily violated by robber burglars; just so, Ananda, under

whatever doctrine and discipline women are allowed to go out from the

household life into the homeless state, that religion cannot last

long....And just, Ananda, as when the disease called blight falls upon a

field of sugarcane in good condition, that field of sugarcane does not

continue long; just so, Ananda, under whatever doctrine and discipline

women are allowed to go forth from the household life into the home-

less state, that religion does not last long. And just, Ananda, as a man

would in anticipation build an embackment to a great reservoir, beyond

which the water shall not overpass; just even so, Ananda, have I in

anticipation laid down these Eight Chief Rules for the Bhikkunis, their

life long not to be overpassed.^5

The eight rules were as follows: (1) a bhikkuni, however elderly,
should give salutations to a bhikku of any age; (2) a bhikkuni
should never stay for the rainy season in an area where there is no
bhikku; (3) a bhikkuni should ask the bhikku sangha for the date
for certain ceremonies; (4) the Bhikkuni should confess here faults
before both the Bhikku and Bhikkuni sanghas; (5) discipline for any
faults should be undergone before both Sanghas; (6) a bhikkuni
should ask permission for the final initiation before both Sanghas;
(7) a bhikkuni should never revile a bhikku; (8) a bhikkuni should
never give official admonition to a bhikku (322–24).

82 Buddhism in India

(^5) The metaphors here, referring to rice, sugarcane and irrigation (a large reservoir)
show the state of agriculture at the time this section of the Vinaya was finalised.