The Buddha’s community was not only for men. From early in his teaching career, women took up the homeless life, practised meditation and attained the highest goal. The first of them was Mahā Pajāpatī Gotamī, the woman who had raised the future Buddha as her own son. Her courage, and the order of nuns (bhikkhunī saṅgha) she helped to found, are an important part of Buddhist history.
The mother who raised the Buddha
Mahā Pajāpatī was the younger sister of Queen Mahāmāyā, the mother of Prince Siddhattha. Both sisters were married to King Suddhodana of the Sakyan clan. When Mahāmāyā died seven days after giving birth, Pajāpatī took the infant prince and nursed him, raising him with her own children. You can read more about his early life in Who Was the Buddha?
Years later, after the prince had become the Buddha, he returned to Kapilavatthu and taught his family. Pajāpatī became a devoted follower.
A request and a long walk
According to the Vinaya Cullavagga (chapter X) and the Aṅguttara Nikāya (AN 8.51), after King Suddhodana’s death Pajāpatī approached the Buddha at Kapilavatthu and asked that women be allowed to go forth into homelessness. Three times she asked, and three times the Buddha declined.
She did not give up. When the Buddha travelled on to Vesālī, Pajāpatī cut off her hair, put on robes and set out on foot, accompanied by many Sakyan women. They arrived at the Great Wood near Vesālī with swollen feet, covered in dust, and in tears. There they were seen by Ānanda, the Buddha’s attendant.
Ānanda’s intercession
Ānanda went to the Buddha and asked on their behalf. When this too was declined, he asked a different question: are women, having gone forth, capable of realising the fruits of stream-entry, once-returning, non-returning and arahantship? The Buddha answered clearly that they are. Ānanda then reminded him of all that Pajāpatī had done for him as his foster mother.
The Buddha agreed that Pajāpatī could be ordained if she accepted eight special rules (garudhamma), which placed the nuns’ order in a relationship of respect towards the monks’ order. She accepted them gladly, the texts say, “as a young person fond of ornaments would accept a garland of flowers on the head”. This was the beginning of the bhikkhunī order. The passage also contains statements about the order’s effect on the Dhamma’s duration that scholars and teachers have long discussed and interpreted in different ways.
The voices of the Therīgāthā
Pajāpatī herself went on to attain arahantship, and the Buddha named her foremost among the nuns of long standing. Many other women followed. The Buddha named Khemā foremost in wisdom and Uppalavaṇṇā foremost in psychic power among the nuns — mirroring the two chief disciples among the monks.
Their experiences are preserved in the Therīgāthā, “Verses of the Elder Nuns”, in the Khuddaka Nikāya of the Tipiṭaka. It is one of the oldest collections of women’s religious poetry in the world. In it we hear from:
- women from royal families and from poor households,
- mothers who had lost children and found peace beyond grief,
- former courtesans who discovered a freedom no wealth could buy,
- and elders who simply describe, with joy, the cooling of craving and the end of suffering.
Their common theme is liberation — the same Nibbāna that the Buddha and the monks realised.
Sanghamittā and the nuns of Sri Lanka
The bhikkhunī order came to Sri Lanka through Therī Sanghamittā, daughter of Emperor Asoka and sister of Arahant Mahinda. According to the Mahāvaṃsa and Dīpavaṃsa, Queen Anulā and many women of the court wished to be ordained after hearing Mahinda teach. Since ordination of women had to be given by nuns, Sanghamittā was invited from India. She came bearing a branch of the Bodhi tree and ordained the queen and her companions.
The Sri Lankan nuns’ order flourished for well over a thousand years. Chinese sources record that nuns from Sri Lanka travelled to China in the fifth century CE to help establish ordination there. In Sri Lanka, however, the order appears to have died out around the eleventh century, during a period of war and upheaval.
A note on the modern revival
In the late twentieth century, Sri Lankan women were again given full ordination, beginning with ceremonies in India in the 1990s with the help of monks and nuns from other traditions. Today there are fully ordained bhikkhunīs in Sri Lanka and elsewhere. Their status is still discussed within the Theravāda world: some senior monks support the revival, while others hold that a lineage once broken cannot be restored. Many other women continue to live devoted renunciant lives as ten-precept nuns (dasa sil mātā).
What we can learn
Mahā Pajāpatī’s story teaches perseverance and faith. Refused three times, she did not become bitter; she simply showed through her actions how sincerely she wished to practise. The Therīgāthā reminds us that awakening does not belong to any one gender, class or background — the Buddha himself affirmed that women can realise the highest goal. Whatever our circumstances, the path is open to anyone willing to walk it.
Reflection: read a few verses of the Therīgāthā slowly. Notice the joy and relief in them, and ask what freedom would mean in your own life.
