Therigatha

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The Therigatha, often translated as Verses of the Elder Nuns (Pāli: thera elder (feminine) + gatha verse), is a collection of short poems supposedly recited by early members of the Buddhist sangha. In the Pali canon, the Therigatha is classified as part of the Khuddaka Nikaya, the collection of short books in the Sutta Pitaka. It consists of 73 poems, organized into 16 chapters. The Theragatha was translated, in verse, by C.A.F. Rhys Davids for the Pali Text Society as Poems of Early Buddhist Nuns. A more recent, prose translation, by K.R. Norman, also published by the Pali Text Society, is called Elders' Verses II. The two translations kave also been issued together in a paperback called Poems of Early Buddhist Nuns, again by the Society. The natural companion to the Therigatha is the Theragatha, the Verses of the Elder Monks.

Despite its small size, the Therigatha is a very significant document in the study of early Buddhism. One of the Buddha's many innovations was his acknowledgement of the spiritual and intellectual equality of men and women - the Buddha held that women possessed the same potential for enlightenment as their male counterparts, and the inequalities between monks and nuns in the Buddhist sangha may be directed primarily at assuaging the fears of the surrounding (sexually unequal) society. The Therigatha contains a number of passages that re-affirm the view that women are the equal of men in terms of religious attainment, as well as a number of verses that seem to address issues that might be of particular interest to women in South Asian society. Included in the Therigatha are the verses of a mother whose child has died (Thig VI.1 and VI.2), a former prostitute who became a nun (Thig V.2), a wealthy heiress who abandoned her life of pleasure (Thig VI.5), and even of the Buddha's own step-mother, Maha Pajapati (Thig VI.6). An additional collection of scriptures concerning the role and abilities of women in the early sangha is found in the fifth division of the Samyutta Nikaya, known as the Bhikkhuni-samyutta.

A number of the verses found in the Therigatha are expanded into longer texts in the book of the Khuddaka Nikaya known as the Apadāna, often called the Biographical Stories in English. The extended version of Maha Pajapati's verse has been translated into the English language.