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Muldoon-Hules (2011), Brides of the Buddha [Avadānaśataka VIII]

Karen Maria Muldoon-Hules. ‘Brides of the Buddha and Other Stories: Reading the Women’s Stories of the 8th “Varga” of the “Avadānaśataka” in Context’. PhD dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles, 2011. 455 pages. ISBN: 9781124885032; ProQuest document ID 2462477631.

author: @ UCLA. Book: 2017. Brides of the Buddha: Nuns’ Stories from the Avadanasataka. ISBN 9781498511452 [official site]

From the Abstract

There has been little in the way of systematic examinations of the evidence on marriage customs among Buddhists, and our understanding of the lives of early Buddhist women is still quite limited. Much of what has been published on early Buddhist women is based on Pali texts from Sri Lanka. Fortunately, ten stories or avadanas about women in the Avadānaśataka, a north Indian text probably compiled 2nd-4th century C.E., offer a chance to nuance [sic] that understanding. These stories provide evidence for marital customs among north Indian Buddhists during this period, customs that show significant Brahmanical influence. In addition, these ten avadānas hint at a changing position for Buddhist nuns that may have been related to an increasingly conservative view of women emerging in the Brahmanical tradition and a revamping of the asrama system into sequential life-stages for men.

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BAUDDHATANTIS OF ORISSA

Sarita Dash. The Bauddhatantis of Orissa: culture, identity, and resurgence of an ancient guild of Buddhist weavers. Birahakrushnapur (Puri District, Orissa): Society for Environment Action and Restoration of Cultural Heritage, 2002. 67 p. [ Worldcat ]

So one of the surviving pockets of Indian Buddhism is in Orissa? Now, I don’t buy the claim that the manuscript used in Shastri’s Bauddha gān o doha (1916) epitomizes the Oriyan struggle against the British Rāj. But something Bauddha is still going on there, it seems. The question is: what?

Plea: Still looking for a copy of this obscure work; the only one I know if is at the Library of Congress. My attempts to order it from India failed.

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