a study of avadāna narratives found in two related anthologies, the Za piyu jing 雜譬喻經 (T207) and the Zhong jing xuan za piyu 眾經撰雜譬喻 (T208). […] These narratives are carefully constructed literary productions that offer a window into both the world of the Indic society in which they were initially composed and the Chinese society which translated them.

This paper presents an annotated English translation of the story of the nun Dharmadinnā, translated here for the first time from the Tibetan translation of the Kṣudrakavastu of the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya. The protagonist is not able to enter the religious life because of her prenatal engagement and is finally ordained by an exceptional style of ordination ceremony performed through a messenger.

The story ends with the Buddha telling of her past life as a nun and teacher under the Buddha Kāśyapa.

The goal of the hungry ghost stories in the Avadānaśataka is pithily summarized at the end of nearly every story: “Work hard to rid yourself of meanness!”

For most of the women who became foremost leading disciples, or etadagga sāvikā, of the Buddha Gotama, it was not only their meeting with a past buddha, but also their seeing the Buddha together with an awakened woman, a leading bhikkhunī disciple of the Buddha, that truly stimulated their inspiration and galvanized their aspiration.

This article explores the mental and emotional states of awakened women disciples of the Buddha, as recorded in the Therī Apadāna. It examines words expressing their aspiration to awakening, the resolve supporting it, and the intention’s character, drawing parallels with the Pali Canon’s equivalent of bodhicitta development.

The Buddhāpadāna further develops the concept of Buddha-field, in that it speaks of innumerable Buddha-fields in all ten directions in the multiverse. Thus the Apadānas clearly show the line of development from the concept of merit-field in the early Suttas to the Pure Land systems of later Mahāyāna.

This essay features translations by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu of four Apadānas: the Buddhāpadāna, Therāpadāna 502, Therāpadāna 80, and Therāpadāna 21. He provides a concise yet insightful introduction to Apadānas in general and explains the rationale behind his selection of these particular narratives.

The collection notably includes a northern version of Ven. Nāgasena’s conversion of King Milinda (111, Fascicle 9) as well as many stories about Gandhara.

This text is bilingual, being in both English and Indonesian.

Visiting the caves of Ajanta in October 1969, I had the pleasure to identify another artistic representation of the Sudhana story.

Once upon a time the country of Pāñcāla was divided into two kingdoms. The king of North Pāñcāla was righteous, while the king of South Pāñcāla was wicked. …

I here present a translation of the fourth decade (stories 31-40) of the Avadānaśataka, using Speyer’s 1906-1909 edition as my base text.

While the jātakas of the second decade focus upon karmic backstories for positive events in the Buddha’s final life, in the fourth decade we find a stronger focus on the character of the Buddha-to-be as he practices the many virtues required for the attainment of Buddhahood. In that sense the stories are much closer to the jātakas of the Pāli tradition, and indeed several of the stories are also found in the Jātakatthavaṇṇanā as well as other early Buddhist narrative collections.

This dissertation offers a comprehensive treatment of the textual sources of the Nandimitrāvadāna, a Buddhist narrative which is deemed an authoritative source for the cult of the Elders or Arhats in Central and East Asia.

Putting all the three (i.e., Khotanese, Tibetan, Chinese) versions of the Nandimitrāvadāna under philological and historical scrutiny, the dissertation draws attention to the interplay between the fluid text and the cultic practice, and sheds light on the complexity of the tradition as well as the reception of the narrative in various cultural spheres.

Despite its richness as a source for one of the lost schools of Indian Buddhism (the Sarvāstivāda), and its potential contributions to our understanding of the development of narrative and ideology in early Buddhism more generally, the Avadānaśataka has never been fully translated into English.

Surveying pre-Gupta inscriptions, it becomes clear that the aspiration for nirvana has one recurring feature attached to it; the aspiration of the donor for the attainment of nirvana occurs when the donation is connected in some way or another to the relics or figural or non-figural representations of the historical Buddha.

The same ideas can be seen emerging in the later canonical Pali Apadana, and connect to developments in the emergence of Mahayana.

Their presence in an avadāna collection forces us to reflect upon what it might mean to be both a jātaka and an avadāna.

On the presence of stories about the Buddha’s past lives (jātakas) inside the Avadāna collections.

three sets of omen verses from the Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna, which offers the earliest account of Astral Science (jyotiḥśāstra) in Buddhist literature

The author gives a brief introduction to the texts and the story, drawing on parelles of a similar story as found in the Avadāna-śataka. The article ends with a full presentation of the Chinese and Tibetan versions of the story and the author’s own translation.

Having been the greatest worldly ruler, her final and enlightened form is of a female ascetic by choice

This article delves into the story of Bhikkhunī Uppalavaṇṇā and the growth and complexities her story took over the centuries in different Buddhist traditions, texts, and artworks.

This article presents an avadāna excerpt found in Śamathadeva’s Abhidharmakośopāyikā-ṭīkā. The tale reports a monk’s change of sex to female, followed by five hundred successive births as a woman, all of which happened as the karmic result of having addressed his fellow monks as women. The avadāna identifies this monk, who is introduced as a reciter of the Tripiṭaka, with the Bodhisattva in a past life.

… past-life accounts of women as disciples of former buddhas add a new dimension to the notion of female discipleship in early Buddhism. Gotama was not alone in having a fourfold community

… we might regard Big Hand as a student, perhaps a young monk struggling to become fluent

A speculative interpretation of some quirky Gandhāran fragments.

But the Bodhisattva, unwilling to ask anyone for help, plucks up his courage, and goes out with his basket and cutting tool and cuts grass. He sells the grass and ekes out a meager living, giving what he can to those in need.

… the deed in the early text [MN135] is simply stated to be the killing, or refraining from killing, of living beings, and so on. The specific types of actions, and their approval are not mentioned. In the [later] Sanskrit text we get a list of normally around ten causes that lead to the result, many of which are illustrated

In the centuries after the Buddha, many of the subtleties of karma were simplified for didactic expedience. This led to a formulaic, “if you do this, this will happen to you” understanding of karma (which the Buddha himself rejected as fatalistic). This model came to be repeated ad-infinitum in texts (such as the Karma-Vibanga) and in Buddhist art (such as at Borobudur) for millennia, perpetuating a simplistic, “popular” understanding of Karma which persists today.