Author Affiliation: Eckerd College, Letters Collegium, St. Petersburg, Florida, USA
摘要
Buddhist monastic law codes (vinaya) are rich sources for writing the history of the early nuns' community. If we hope to encounter these ascetic women of long ago as full real people, however, we must apply an intentional, transparent, critically informed, and sometimes interstitial reading strategy, not a theoretically naïve historiography cloaked in philological rigor. Confronting head on the issue of what the vinaya actually can tell us about the early nuns' community, this essay offers a survey of hermeneutical approaches in vinaya studies. It articulates a revised approach based on accepted strategies within vinaya studies enhanced by innovations in the fields of religious studies, gender studies, historical linguistics, comparative law, and dharmaśāstra studies. It also analyzes several vinaya passages based on this revised approach, including a text legislating the nuns' use of what appears to be an ancient tampon when they are menstruating. Finally, it offers observations about the possible relationship between nuns' vinayas as texts and the realia of the early nuns' community. These observations include the possibility that the ancient Buddhist nunnery was a place where monastic women exercised certain types of agency as practitioners, interpreters, and even authors of monastic discipline, despite their oft-mentioned subordination to the male community.
目次
Positivist Historiography and the Vinaya 1126 Narrativity and Representation 1127 Irrelevance, Counterargument, Presentation 1131 Practical Canons and Textual Communities 113 Reading Across and Beyond Sectarian Vinaya Traditions 1137 A Feminist History: The Ancient Tampon 1141 Secret Lives 1147 References 1148
