AHRC Early Career Fellowship
Dr. Alice Collett will be away
on research leave during 2012, as she has received a prestigious
AHRC fellowship award. Over the year, Dr. Collett will research and
write her book on women in early Indian Buddhism, entitled
Women in the Pali Canon and Commentaries. The book will
contain seven chapters, each of which will focus on one early
Buddhist nun. Each chapter will begin with a section on sources,
which will note and discuss what information the texts give us
about these Buddhist nuns. Following this, a biography of each nun
will be told, as much as can be constructed from the available
sources. Each chapter will conclude with a discursive section which
looks at themes raised in each biography. Such themes might be, for
example, roles for women in the early Buddhist communities, the
importance of caste status within the biographies, and social
constructs of the female, including notions of female beauty. Such
a volume could have a significant impact on our understanding of
women in early Indian Buddhism, as detailed study and translation
of these texts which appear to recount the biographies of such
women has the potential to re-shape ideas about how the historical
Buddha and the early Buddhist communities viewed women.