Mahāpajāpatī's request
The Gotamī Sutta and the Vinaya's Chapter on Nuns tell the story. Mahāpajāpatī, the Buddha's aunt and the woman who raised him, asked him three times to let women go forth. Three times he declined.
She and a group of Sakya women shaved their heads, put on robes and walked after him to Vesālī, arriving with swollen feet and dusty faces. Ānanda, the Buddha's attendant, saw her weeping at the gate and took up her cause.
Can women awaken?
Ānanda asked the Buddha directly whether women who go forth can reach every stage of awakening, up to full liberation. The Buddha said they can. Mahāpajāpatī was then ordained, on condition of accepting eight 'important principles' that placed nuns under the guidance of monks.
The Therīgāthā, a collection of poems attributed to early nuns, preserves their own voices: women who describe grief, freedom and awakening in striking, personal language.
A contested history
The full ordination of nuns died out in the Theravāda countries and was never established in Tibet, though it continued in East Asia. Since the late 20th century there have been efforts to restore it, including full ordinations of Theravāda nuns at Bodh Gaya in 1998. These efforts remain controversial in some communities.
Why it matters
The bhikkhunī tradition becomes an important part of early Buddhist history, although its institutional history later differs across Buddhist cultures.
History and tradition
What historians can say
An order of nuns clearly existed early, and inscriptions show nuns as donors at Buddhist sites from the last centuries BCE. Many scholars think parts of the story, such as the eight principles and a prediction in the same passage that the teaching would now last only five hundred years, reflect later monastic attitudes rather than the Buddha's own words.
What Buddhist tradition remembers
Tradition honours Mahāpajāpatī as the first nun and names her foremost among the nuns of long experience. It is said that she reached full awakening.