Papers by Alice Collett
JIABS, 2018
The Sātavāhana queen Nāgaṇṇikā has been the subject of significant scholarly attention over the l... more The Sātavāhana queen Nāgaṇṇikā has been the subject of significant scholarly attention over the last two centuries since the site at which she features -at Nāneghāṭ -began to draw the interest of researchers in India. Nāneghāṭ is an old mountain pass, one of five that cross the Western Ghats and linked ports on the west coast of India to inland. At the site is a cave complex within which Middle Indic inscriptions and the remains of a statue gallery can be found. This material evidence, now eroded and incomplete, provides obscured evidence of this early Sātavāhana queen. The unique features of the site are what has attracted sizable scholarly attention, beginning at the time of colonial archaeologists and epigraphists. The questions raised by these first researchers, which have continued to shape study of the site, arose from a colonial paradigm that assigns to material evidence the role of corroborating (religious) texts. The long inscription at the site appears to record Nāgaṇṇikā's independent sponsorship and performance of Vedic rituals and, given her gender, this challenges prescriptions on ritual procedures from the normative texts of Brahmanical tradition. In this article, I survey past scholarship on the inscription, and highlight the ways in which focus on one interpretive paradigm led to one set of questions being repeatedly asked in relation to the inscription, at the expense of equally valid alternatives. In the second part of the article, I engage the range of interpretable data, drawing on archaeology, particularly landscape archaeology, numismatics, and comparative epigraphy to assess the nature and character of the queen who features so centrally at the site.
In what follows we examine whether the use of the vocative bhikkhave or the nominative bhikkhu in... more In what follows we examine whether the use of the vocative bhikkhave or the nominative bhikkhu in Buddhist canonical texts imply that female monastics are being excluded from the audience. In the course of exploring this basic point, we also take up the vocative of proper
Religions of South Asia, 2013
5 Lord Mayor's Walk 6 York, YO31 7EX 7 UK 8 [email protected] 9 ABSTRACT: In chapter eight o... more 5 Lord Mayor's Walk 6 York, YO31 7EX 7 UK 8 [email protected] 9 ABSTRACT: In chapter eight of his Saundarananda, Aśvaghoṣa launches into one 10 of the fiercest attacks on women that can be found in early Buddhist literature.
Religions of South Asia, 2010
Somā is a female disciple of Gotama Buddha known from various early Indian Buddhist sources. In t... more Somā is a female disciple of Gotama Buddha known from various early Indian Buddhist sources. In the story of Somā in the Avadānaśataka, prior to her conversion to Buddhism she gains access to the three Vedas and becomes a learned Brahmin in her region. In this article, as well as providing an English translation of Somā's story in the Avadānaśataka, I discuss this account of Somā the learned Brahmin and attempt to discern the basis for a Buddhist narrative representation of a female learned Brahmin. In this account, a Buddhist story which seeks to demonstrate the natural superiority of Buddhism over Brahmanism, the female Somā takes the place usually reserved, in similar accounts, for learned male Brahmins.
Numen, 2009
... the conditioned world and not seen as subjects who are enabled to tread the path to liberatio... more ... the conditioned world and not seen as subjects who are enabled to tread the path to liberation, but as hindrances to the male adept. Within this purview, texts such as the Buddhacarita function to promote disgust in the female body, and emphasize that Buddhist teachings are ...
Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 2006
Within the Buddhism and gender debate in Western scholarship, various approaches to the study of ... more Within the Buddhism and gender debate in Western scholarship, various approaches to the study of Buddhist literatureOrientalist, Protestant Buddhism, and a doctrinal approachhave led to a taxonomy of value being accorded various texts such that some are overvalued and ...
Buddhist Studies Review, 2007
This article is a study of formulaic passages in the Sanskrit Avadānaśataka. Alongside a prelimin... more This article is a study of formulaic passages in the Sanskrit Avadānaśataka. Alongside a preliminary discussion of work on oral studies within Buddhism, and some recourse to wider oral studies on Indian texts, the focus of this article is a twopart study of formulae and constituents of formulae. The fi rst part of the article details formulaic sections from the Avadānaśataka, from short formulae about wealthy merchants to lengthy counterparts that detail the consequences of a Buddha's smile. The second part looks in detail at constituents of the formulaic passages. The passages are constructed around semantic lists, which either constitute the whole formulaic phrase or passages, or (sometimes along with verses) can be identifi ed as the building blocks for the passages. To my knowledge (such as it is) this is the fi rst study of semantic list-based formulae in a Sanskrit text.
Religions of South Asia, 2015
Inscriptions from ancient India reveal to us two related phenomena about early Buddhist nuns: fir... more Inscriptions from ancient India reveal to us two related phenomena about early Buddhist nuns: firstly, that nuns were teachers of other women, and secondly that nuns considered themselves to be (or were recorded to be) direct disciples of male monastic teachers. The first of these is confirmed by the textual evidence, and sits as part of our picture of the lives of nuns at the time of the historical Buddha and subsequently. The second, however, challenges assumptions about the operations of early Buddhist communities. Monastic male-female teaching relationships, according to the textual evidence, were largely formal and institutional, as typified by the role of monk advisor to nuns (bhikkhunovādaka). As recorded in the texts, nuns should formally request instruction from monks, and certain monks were charged with dispensing such duties. The monastic malefemale teaching relationships recorded in the epigraphy do not chime with this state of affairs, instead suggesting that closer and more personal relationships existed.
Buddhist Studies Review, 2010
Comparative Textual Studies, 2013
Comparative Textual Studies, 2013
Religions of South Asia, 2012
The Apadāna is a well-known but relatively little-studied text. The Therī-Apadāna, the section of... more The Apadāna is a well-known but relatively little-studied text. The Therī-Apadāna, the section of the text on women, tells of the lives of female disciples of Gotama Buddha. Alongside versified narrative accounts of the lives of these women during the time of Gotama Buddha, the text reveals the past lives of these women, under former buddhas. These past-life accounts of women as disciples of former buddhas add a new dimension to the notion of female discipleship in early Buddhism. Gotama was not alone in having a fourfold community of monks, nuns, laymen and laywomen; former buddhas had the same. The Therī-Apadāna establishes a narrative recounting that women were motivated and enabled to practise in the remote past, and that former buddhas allowed for the ordination of women just as Gotama did. In order to highlight this, in this paper I look at a section of past-life narrative in the Therī-Apadāna that is repeated in the accounts of six nuns.
Fieldwork in Religion, 2011
Buddhist Studies Review, 2014
Within the Buddhism and gender debate in Western scholarship, various approaches to the study of ... more Within the Buddhism and gender debate in Western scholarship, various approaches to the study of Buddhist literature—Orientalist, Protestant Buddhism, and a doctrinal approach—have led to a taxonomy of value being accorded various texts such that some are overvalued and others either wholly or largely ignored. The first women scholars of Buddhist studies in the West—Caroline Rhys Davids, Mabel Bode, and
Edited volumes by Alice Collett
Women in Early Indian Buddhism: Comparative Textual Studies, 2013
Books by Alice Collett
• 'This is a thorough, comprehensive and well researched guide to the history and agency of women... more • 'This is a thorough, comprehensive and well researched guide to the history and agency of women in Buddhism. We travel widely through time and space, discovering awakened and well-practised women of old to the present day.'-Martine Batchelor, author of Women on the Buddhist Path and Women in Korean Zen • 'Written in a clear and accessible style, this book offers an excellent introduction into how women have shaped Buddhism from its beginning in India and over the course of its historical development throughout the Buddhist world.
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Papers by Alice Collett
Edited volumes by Alice Collett
Books by Alice Collett