Introduction

The Chinese Buddhist canon of scripture includes a unique and remarkable text, the Pi-ch'iu-ni chuan, or Lives of the Nuns (hereafter Lives), a collection of chronologically organized biographies of sixty-five Chinese Buddhist nuns. More than a mere collection of biographies, their dates cover the period of the founding and establishing of the Buddhist monastic order for women from the early fourth century to the early sixth century. The Lives allows us to see the development of monastic life for women in China from its beginnings.

Shih Pao-ch'ang, who compiled the book in or about a.d. 516, selected his subjects with careful discrimination and produced a document of interest for his readership, whom he presumably had hoped to spur on to greater efforts in the Buddhist life (see Pao-ch'ang's preface). Fifteen hundred years later the biographies are of interest to us for very different reasons. We see in hindsight many features of the early history of Buddhism in China and many reasons why women of that time might take up the life of a Buddhist nun.