For some women in some places, religion offered a partial escape from the limitations of patriarchy. In India, one such path of release lay in becoming a Buddhist nun and entering a monastery, where women were relatively less restricted and could exercise more authority than in ordinary life. Known as bhikkhunis, such women composed hundreds of poems in the early centuries of Indian Buddhism. They were long recited and transmitted in an oral form and brought together in a collection known as the Psalms of the Sisters, which was set to writing probably during the first century B.C.E. These poems became part of the officially recognized Buddhist scriptures, known as the Pali Canon. As such, they represent the only early text in any of the world’s major religions that was written by women and about the religious experience of women. A selection of these poems follows here.
Questions to consider as you examine the source:
Psalms of the Sisters, First Century B.C.E.
Sumangala’s Mother
O woman well set free! how free am I,
How thoroughly free from kitchen drudgery!
Me stained and squalid ’mong my cooking-
My brutal husband ranked as even less
Than the sunshades he sits and weaves alway.
Purged now of all my former lust and hate,
I dwell, musing at ease beneath the shade
Of spreading boughs — O, but ’tis well with me!
A Former Courtesan
How was I once puff’d up, incens’d with the bloom of my beauty,
Vain of my perfect form, my fame and success ’midst the people,
Fill’d with the pride of my youth, unknowing the Truth and unheeding!
Lo! I made my body, bravely arrayed, deftly painted,
Speak for me to the lads, whilst I at the door of the harlot
Stood, like a crafty hunter, weaving his snares, ever watchful.
Yea, I bared without shame my body and wealth of adorning;
Manifold wiles I wrought, devouring the virtue of many.
To-
I go forth on my daily round for food; . . .
Now all the evil bonds that fetter gods
And men are wholly rent and cut away. . . .
Calm and content I know Nibbana’s Peace.
The Daughter of a Poor Brahmin
Fallen on evil days was I of yore.
No husband had I, nor no child, no friends
Or kin — whence could I food or raiment find? As beggars go, I took my bowl and staff,
And sought me alms, begging from house to house,
Sunburnt, frost-
Then came I where a woman Mendicant
Shared with me food, and drink, and welcomed me,
And said: “Come forth into our homeless life!” . . .
I heard her and I marked, and did her will.
The Daughter of a Wealthy Treasurer
Daughter of Treas’rer Majjha’s famous house,
Rich, beautiful and prosperous, I was born
To vast possessions and to lofty rank.
Nor lacked I suitors — many came and wooed;
The sons of Kings and merchant princes came
With costly gifts, all eager for my hand. . . .
But I had seen th’ Enlightened, Chief o’ the World, The One Supreme [the Buddha].
And [I] knew this world should see me ne’er return.
Then cutting off the glory of my hair,
I entered on the homeless ways of life.
’Tis now the seventh night since first all sense
Of craving drièd up within my heart.
Subhā, the Goldsmith’s Daughter
A maiden I, all clad in white, once heard
The Norm [Buddhist teaching], and hearkened eager, earnestly,
So in me rose discernment of the Truths.
Thereat all worldly pleasures irked me sore,
For I could see the perils that beset
This reborn compound, “personality,”
And to renounce it was my sole desire.
So I forsook my world — my kinsfolk all,
My slaves, my hirelings, and my villages,
And the rich fields and meadows spread around,
Things fair and making for the joy of life —
All these I left, and sought the Sisterhood,
Turning my back upon no mean estate. . . .
See now this Subhā, standing on the Norm,
Child of a craftsman in the art of gold!
Behold! she hath attained to utter calm.
Source: Psalms of the Sisters, vol. 1 in Psalms of the Early Buddhists, translated by Mrs. Rhys Davids (London: Henry Frowde, Oxford University Press Warehouse, 1909), poems 21, 39, 49, 54, 70.