Images of the Feminine in the Mahayana Tradition
This book breaks new ground in offering a number of Buddhist texts concerned with Mahayana Buddhism, a mine of information on women. The author has chosen this material, which has come down to us in Sanskrit and Chinese, with an eye to maintaining a high level of interest. The source material, nineteen episodes, of which nine are translated here for the first time, forms part of the great corpus of Buddhist literature. The ambivalent attitude toward women that has been apparent in Buddhist lands in all ages and epochs is well portrayed. On the one hand, woman was regarded as a danger, potential and actual, to a man's perilous progress along the way to welfare; and on the other hand, she was shown, as in the guise of the Naga princess who was nothing less than a Bodhisattva, on a footing equal to that generally claimed by man as his special spiritual prerogative. this study presents these two aspects without prejudice, fear, or favor.
Women in Buddhism: Images of the Feminine in the Mahayana Tradition, Diana Y. Paul, University of California Press, 333 pages, $27.95