This paper explores Buddhist images of the body, and in particularly the female body, as expressed in the Theragāthā and the Therīgāthā. In 1930 I. B. Horner argued that Buddhism brought women a level of equality, autonomy and respect unprecedented in pre-Buddhist India. Women gained control over their own lives and were no longer seen as chattel that could only live through and on a man. In Horner’s words, Buddhism not only challenged the caste system, “but also attempted to promote the cause of rights for women. While it is probably true that Buddhism offered women an outlet for self-expression which they otherwise would have found hard to find, it would be an exaggeration to claim that Buddhism championed women rights. From the beginning, the eight special rules for bhikkhunīs guaranteed that they would remain under the power of the bhikkhus. Furthermore, more recent research on women in Buddhism has highlighted that the Buddhist position toward women was both ambiguous and at times contradictory. On the one hand, women were seen as a danger to a man’s spiritual progress because of their perceived association with sensuality and procreation. On the other hand, Buddhism acknowledged that women were just as capable of achieving enlightenment as their male counterparts. The result was an attitude toward women which, while spiritually accepting, was at the same time infused with patriarchy and a male distrust of the feminine. Moreover, what the Theragāthā and the Therīgāthā suggest is that patriarchy was so pervasive in early Buddhism that the bhikkhunīs effectively adopted and internalized bhikkhus’ attitudes toward the female body.
