SOTERIOLOGY AND PANTHEON OF THE MAHAYANA 103Path, for which no such long ages are deemed necessary. However, the overall
progression-from good works and faith through aspiration and training to
realization; from deliberate practice to spontaneous exercise; and from mun-
dane knowledge to transcendental wisdom-seems valid. It is an unusually
detailed account of the universal path from which people learn and mature,
and of the way of holiness in many diverse religions. The 7 or 10 bodhisattva-
stages, with their vivid metaphorical names, may have begun with the actual
experience of a meditator or a small school of contemplatives for whom the
series was a firsthand description, the list then passing into the hands of those
who were unfamiliar with the experiences and who produced elaborate theo-
ries about them. The doctrine of three immeasurable aeons may have origi-
nally been meant metaphorically, in keeping with the deliberately extravagant
style of the Mahayana Siitras, but Indian schoolmen took it literally. Later In-
dian sects tried to find shortcuts in this extended path, and many Chinese
Mahayana schools rejected the enormous time scale entirely.
5.2 BUDDHIST WOMEN IN THE
MAHAYANAThe status of women in the Mahayana presents a paradox. In contrast to the
prominence of eminent arhant nuns at the time of the Buddha (see Section
3.4.3), the Order ofNuns by the time of Mahayana's rise was considerably re-
duced. At the same time, however, Mahayana texts continued to develop lit-
erary and mythic image~,ofwomen as possessors of wisdom and compassion,
able to teach men and lay people, similar to the depictions of Sister Dham-
madinna in the earlier texts. The texts proclaimed that at least one lay woman
and queen, Srimaladevi (Strong EB, sec. 4.3.5), might be considered a female
Buddha, and that the goddess Prajiiaparamita (Perfection ofWisdom) is the
mother of the Buddhas. The goddess Hariti, with the guardian deity Mahakala
(Great Dark One), was also included in Mahayana worship services. Thus a
shift occurred. There is nothing in the Mahayana Siitras comparable to the
Pali Therigatha, which reports the experience of human women attaining
Awakening, but there is nothing in the early Siitras comparable to the new
Mahayana exaltation of goddesses and female Buddhas.
Apparently, nuns participated little in the elaboration of these Mahayana
ideas, although the Pali commentaries suggest that Mahayana monks actively
campaigned for nuns to support their cause. Few Mahayana nuns are remem-
bered in history. When the Chinese pilgrim I-ching (635-713 C.E.) visited
north India, he found nuns generally poor and undervalued; in his opinion,
the status of Chinese nuns was considerably better.
In the Mahayana texts, literary portraits of women's role as bearers of in-
sight, compassion, and spiritual attainment existed side by side with strands of
androcentrism and misogyny. Some of the new Siitras, contrary to the earlier
teachings, declared that female birth excluded the attainment of nirvatfa.
Asanga wrote that all women are defiled and oflittle intelligence. Still, some