{"collection":"Sacred Texts: Buddhism","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_bud_bits_bits099_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_bud_bits_bits099_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_bud_bits_bits099_htm","license":"unknown_pending_legal_review","rights_basis":"sacred_texts_v1_preview_gate_primary_text_only; acquisition-method/ToS and compilation-copyright questions still open, not resolved by this gate","source":"sacred_texts_v1","source_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/bud/bits/bits099.htm","summary":"This is a canonical Pali scripture \u2014 a passage from the Culla-Vagga of the Vinaya Pitaka, the Theravada Buddhist monastic rule \u2014 narrating the founding of the bhikkhun\u012b (nuns') order. It recounts how Mah\u0101-Paj\u0101pat\u012b, the Buddha's aunt and foster mother, repeatedly petitions him to admit women to the monastic life and is refused each time, before following him on foot to Ves\u0101l\u012b in monks' robes as an act of determined appeal. The monk \u0100nanda intervenes, and when the Buddha concedes that women are fully capable of attaining all four stages of spiritual liberation, \u0100nanda uses that admission to argue successfully for their admission. The Buddha grants ordination conditionally, imposing eight permanent \"weighty regulations\" (garudhamm\u0101) that subordinate all nuns to all monks regardless of seniority \u2014 a nun of a hundred years must defer to a monk ordained that day. Most distinctively, the text closes with the Buddha predicting that admitting women has halved the lifespan of the Dharma from a thousand years to five hundred, comparing the nuns' order to mildew on rice, rust on sugarcane, and burglars preying on female-majority households. The passage is thus a primary source for both the history of Buddhist women's ordination and ongoing scholarly debate about early Buddhist attitudes toward gender and institutional hierarchy.","tags":["Henry Clarke Warren","Pali Canon Translations","Theravada Buddhism"],"text":null,"title":"Buddhism in Translations - \u00a7 99. The Admission of Women to the Order.","tradition":"Sacred Texts: Buddhism","translated_text":null,"word_count":1805}