Now that Dear Abby (Pauline Phillips, a.k.a. "Abigail Van Buren") and her sister Ann Landers have gone, WQ readers may ask ANYTHING.
Maya, the editors, and contributors will endeavor to answer. (Post your questions to the COMMENTS SECTION).
In response to a previous post titled Making Female history: from Sangha to Superpower leadership, The Awakening Forest Hermitage asks:
Q: "Would you share your reference for the bhikkhuni/bhiksuni disciples of prehistoric buddhas please?"
A: Yes. We have the advantage of having access to prehistoric information on buddhas and their chief disciples thanks to the Buddha himself (as well as information that comes from devas and prominent disciples with well developed psychic abilities) as recorded in one sacred scripture in particular:
In an amazing, albeit questionable, text called the "Story of the Lineage" translated more than a century ago by the British Pali Text Society's Prof. T.W. Rhys Davids in his Buddhist Birth-Stories: Jataka Tales.
In an amazing, albeit questionable, text called the "Story of the Lineage" translated more than a century ago by the British Pali Text Society's Prof. T.W. Rhys Davids in his Buddhist Birth-Stories: Jataka Tales.
It is not one of the rebirth tales, but rather a (PTS, England, 1878).
This amazing book gives incontrovertible evidence that the Buddha's jatakas are the basis of Aesop's Fables, which were drawn from various cultures where Buddhism had permeated as it went west out of India and Afghanistan (Shakyan Janapada, Kapilavastu, Gandhara) to the ancient Near East, Central Asia, and Middle East.
- See also The Story of the Epochs in the Life of the Buddha (Nidanakatha Jatakatthakatha)
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