The English translation of the Mahīśāsaka Bhikkhunī Vinaya can now be found here: 
This was such a fun vinaya to proofread, with many colorful origin stories, and lots of interesting little quirks.
This vinaya is no longer used by any modern sangha. It’s closely related to the Theravāda and Dharmaguptaka vinayas, since all three belong to the Vibhajjavāda schools. It also has some interesting special features:
It has the longest existing pātimokkha, due to its proliferation of pācittiya rules (210 rules, vs. 166 in the Pāli, and 141 in the Mahāsaṅghika school). On the other hand, it doesn’t include the adhikaraṇa samatha rules, i.e. the seven procedures for settling conflict.
Another quirk of this vinaya is that the group of six bhikkhunīs doesn’t appear here. This is the only vinaya that doesn’t have a named group of misbehaving nuns. (Other vinayas have the group of six, the group of twelve, or the group of bhikkhunīs supporting Devadatta).
It’s also the only vinaya that has multiple origin stories for the same rule. Usually each rule has one origin story, but here, two or more origin stories are very common. This is quite interesting because it’s usually believed that the Buddha would lay down a rule once someone misbehaves. But in this vinaya it seems that he often waited until it happened multiple times and became a widespread problem.
As always, I’m very grateful to two Mahayana bhikshunīs for helping me out with tricky passages, and to my tech team Bhante @Khemarato.bhikkhu and @Aminah!
I’ll now be taking a break from proofreading for a while, and then start working on the Sarvāstivāda vinaya. I hope to have it ready at some point before the vassa 2025.
More background about the project can be found here:
