Brides of the Buddha : nuns' stories from the Avadānaśataka / Karen Muldoon-Hules.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Muldoon-Hules, Karen, 1952- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Tripiṭaka. Sūtrapiṭaka. Avadāna. Avadānaśataka.

Tripiṭaka.

Women in the Tripiṭaka.

Buddhist hagiography--India--History.

Buddhist hagiography.

Buddhist nuns--India--History.

Buddhist nuns.

Women in Buddhism--India--History.

Women in Buddhism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (241 pages)

Place of Publication:

Lanham, Maryland : Lexington Books, 2017.

Summary:

For young women in early South Asia, marriage was probably the most important event in their lives, as it largely determined their socioeconomic and religious future. Yet there has been little in the way of systematic examinations of the evidence on marriage customs among Buddhists of this time, and our understanding of the lives of early Buddhist women is still quite limited. This study uses ten stories from the Avadānaśataka, the collection of Buddhist narratives compiled from the second to fifth centuries CE, to examine the social landscape of early India. The author analyzes marital customs and the development of nuns' hagiographies, while revealing regional variations of Buddhism in South Asia during this period.

Contents:

Buddhist women in early India

Marriage and meaning in late Vedic and classical Hinduism

Marriage and meaning in Indian Buddhism

How should a daughter renounce?

Suprabhā, Kāśisundarī, and the Indic svayaṃvara

Other women, other walks of life

Some conclusions and observations

Appendix 1: Dating the Avadānaśataka

Appendix 2: Sectarian affiliation.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-4985-1146-5