Thanks Ayya for raising this topic, and thanks to everyone for their contributions. If I might make a few remarks.
I agree, I think it would be extremely unlikely, and restricted to highly unusual or artificial circumstances. Given the organic and case-driven nature of the Vinaya, it is not unusual to find rules that overlap and displace each other like this. In many cases, such rules would simply remain “on the books” but would never actually be applied in practice. There are many rules in the monks’ Vinaya that have probably never been applied.
This is something that comes up more generally in Vinaya issues, and i think it is important to keep it clear that Vinaya is not Abhidhamma. It is not just a mere thought or shift of the mind that is being talked about here, but a conscious choice. As Yodha says:
There is no place for “thought moments” in the Vinaya.
Indeed. The Vinaya is a legal system, and the facts must be determined. This is the same as modern law, it is a painful and regretful necessity to determine whether there was consent. But as with all Vinaya questions, there is a strong presumption of innocence. If she says there was no consent, there was no consent, full stop. There should be no further pursuing of the matter.
Indeed. Another example is the Satipatthana Sutta, where the MA version addresses monks and nuns. Based on these and other examples, I have concluded (along with several other monks I know) that the term bhikkhu is, like “man” in English, used by default for both genders, and we cannot assume that just because the masculine grammatical gender is used that women were not present. This is why I translate bhikkhu as the gender-neutral “mendicant”, except where it is clear that only males were intended.
Thank you.
Yes, there is a general tendency for Vinaya rules to get “upgraded” (although I’m not sure if that’s the right word!) over time. So much so that I would regard the fact of such upgrading as itself a sign of late development.
In Bhikkhuni Vinaya Studies I argued that the existing texts, especially of the Pali and Lokuttaravada Vinayas, point to an earlier Vinaya tradition among the nuns, which lacked some of the patriarchal features of the developed Vinayas. Notably, that ordination was originally by nuns only. I believe this is well established, but of course it only applies to a limited scope. There are many more areas needing such analysis.
But it does open up the possibility that in some cases the differences between the nuns’ and monks’ Vinaya is not a matter of adaptation or upgrading, but of a distinct and unshared tradition unique to the nuns. This nuns’ tradition was likely not understood very well by the monks, so when adapting it in the main Vinaya they tended to normalize it in terms they understood.
Of course it’s not an either/or situation, as clearly there is much in the nuns’ Vinaya that is adapted from the monks. But I think it should be borne in mind that “upgrading” is not the only possible source of differences.
Just to note, the different phrasing is twofold: the absence of the phrase on renouncing of the training, as you note; but also the addition of the word chandaso (“with consent”). In the monks’ Vinaya, consent is discussed in the analysis, but not mentioned explicitly in the rule itself. Chandaso is also found in the Lokuttaravāda text, so it is likely to be original.