When the Buddha Was a Woman: Reimagining Tradition in the Theravāda

Buddhist women are reclaiming Buddhist textual traditions as one strategy for improving status and opportunities in their communities. In this article, Derris examines one popular narrative from the Theravādin medieval world almost entirely forgotten in present-day conversations about the representation of women in the Theravāda. This apocryphal jātaka tells the story of the only previous lifetime of the Buddha Gotama when he was reborn as a woman. The story makes the dramatic point that, in the past, Theravādin tradition acknowledged the possibility of female bodhisattas striving for buddhahood. The story is an example of a highly innovative engagement with received Pāli textual tradition. That such a high degree of narrative innovation existed in Theravādin history suggests possibilities for present-day innovation without rejecting or being rejected by the tradition.