Aggatherīvatthu: The stories about The Foremost Elder Nuns
Edited and translated by Ānandajoti Bhikkhu
Introduction
In the Book of the Ones in the Numerical Collection (Aṅguttaranikāya, 1.14) there is a bare list of seventy-four monks, nuns, laymen and laywomen whom the Buddha singled out as excelling in a certain spiritual quality they had developed.
No more information is given about them there, or the circumstances that led up to their being given these positions. Although some of them are known from other places in the discourses to have held these positions, like the eldest disciples, others would be unknown today, if they were not named here.
The commentary on the Numerical Discourses, a section of which is translated here, tries to fill in this lacuna by providing detailed histories of the disciples, telling when and where they made an aspiration to hold the position; the good deeds they did, and the story of their last life.
In the case of the nuns this more or less follows this pattern:
– They made their aspiration at the time of the Buddha Padumuttara, normally after seeing him appoint one of his own nuns to that position
– Then comes a more or less detailed intermediate section, which records their past lives, and the good deeds they did, normally to Paccekabuddhas or Buddhas
– Their last lives detail where they were born and their circumstances at the time of the Buddha Gotama, and their appointment to the aspired-for position. Some of the life histories given here are long and detailed, while others are brief and hardly accomplish their aim of explaining why they were appointed to their position; a number are justly famous, while a few are short and easily forgotten.
All the stories, however, play a very important role in the teaching, as they show that people with very different backgrounds – both fortunate and unfortunate – were capable of attaining the highest aim in life when given the right teachings at the right time, and they therefore serve as inspirations and role models for us today.
A few of the nuns are named as characters in the previous lives of the Bodhisatta recorded in the Jātaka Birth Stories, where Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī, Uppalavaṇṇā, Khemā and Bhaddā Kaccānā (Yasodharā) particularly are frequently identified.
Bhaddā Kāpilānī and Kisāgotamī are also identified there, but none of the others as far as I could discover. I have given introductions to each of the stories as they occur, and pointed out some of the key features therein, and also some of the anomalies that are found, and therefore needn’t review them again here.
Aggatherivatthu
