A Study On The Buddhist Nuns Of The Six Dynasties

This dissertation is intended to look into the life,study and monastery rules of the Buddhist nuns who lived during the Jin, the Northern Dynasty and the Southern Dynasty, which is a field neglected by the Buddhist history researchers, mainly because of the much too limited historical documents about Buddhist nuns of that time——only one book, the Biographies of the Eminent Bhik□unis, which is said to be written by a leaned monk of Liang Dynasty named Baochang, can be used as study material.Recently two books on this subject have been published, and the research of both writers are careful, but the main devotion is only the collection of the temples for nuns around China, so we have much space to begin our study. The inscriptions of the Buddhist caves, the eulology of the noble women that became nuns later in their lives and the nuns mentioned in the history documents edited by the officials have been collected even if through these materials we got only names of the saint women.It is a hard job and carried out in a philological way and the result hasn’t disappointed us, we find out the roles that the nuns played in some political affairs,among the Buddhist laypersons and that between their family and the rulers of the state. We know the popular sutras they recited and their method of practicing meditation, the struggle between them and the Taoists and the regulations of the clothes, patras and even the burial customs. A conclusion can be drawn that the Buddhist nuns of that time had more effect on the social affairs and on the development of Chinese Buddhism than expected.In order to practise the Buddhas’ teachings, they even devoted their lives.