The authenticity of AN 8.51 (on the ordination of women)

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In AN 8.51, the Buddha is said to reluctantly allow women to ordain but in a universally subordinate position to even novice monks. He mandated “eight principles of respect” (the eight garudhammas), the first and the last of which are:

A nun, even if she has been ordained for a hundred years, should bow down to a monk who was ordained that very day. She should rise up for him, greet him with joined palms, and observe proper etiquette toward him. This principle should be honored, respected, esteemed, and venerated, and not transgressed so long as life lasts.

[…]

From this day forth it is forbidden for nuns to criticize monks, but it is not forbidden for monks to criticize nuns. This principle should be honored, respected, esteemed, and venerated, and not transgressed so long as life lasts.

This sutta arouses no small amount of doubt in me about the Buddha and the dhamma.

The Vinayapiṭaka considers a monastery without monks (apparently regardless of seniority) to be devoid of effective instruction (Bi Pc 56). This seems consistent with the view of AN 8.51 that nuns are inferior to even novice monks:

The nuns there asked them, “Venerables, where did you spend the rains residence? We hope the instruction was effective?”

“There were no monks there. So how could the instruction be effective?”

Bhante @sujato said in June 2009 that the authenticity of the garudhammas has been disputed. He repeated this in June 2019 on this forum:

There’s been a lot of discussion about whether this is an authentic text, and what it might mean. I think it is a distorted recollection of the ordination of Mahāpajāpatī specifically, and reflects her need to deal with the pride of her position as the Buddha’s mother.

I am curious: is Wikipedia’s exposition of this controversy considered complete? If not, then:

  1. What textual evidence is there for the authenticity of AN 8.51?
  2. What textual evidence is there against it?
  3. What could lead us to believe that this is a distorted recollection? If we have reason to believe this, then could the distortion arise with Ānanda himself, or with the later monastics who were reciting AN 8.51?

:pray:

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Have you done a forum search for AN 8.51 or for garudhamma? If not, you may find what you are after there. Seems like there has already been a lot of discussion on this point. But maybe not exactly what you are after.

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I am specifically interested in the evidence for/against the authenticity of AN 8.51, and in whether we have any clues as to how AN 8.51 may have become distorted.

The research that questions the sutta’s authenticity is mentioned in various places but no citation is given. Wikipedia cites some sources but I would like to know if there are other sources to consider as well.

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Hi, this may or may not be helpful to you as there is a pretty stark divide between people who are sceptical of the claim that the approximately one million words of the four principle prose collections where all composed during or very nearly immediately after the lifetime of the Buddha and those who think it is vastly more plausible that the texts developed, individually and as collections over hundreds of years, but;

mātugāma is a very rare word in the actual prose of the prose collections.

DN has mātugāme, once, in DN16, which more or less everyone (the believers and the skeptics alike) beleive was open editorially the longest of the whole of DN.

MN has mātugāmopi at MN66, mātugāmaṃ and mātugāmassetaṃ at MN67 and mātugāmassa at MN124.

Again, even (somwhat) conservatives like @sujato recognise that MN124 is probably a later text.

MN66 and MN67 are also worth considering more carefully, especially thier position in MN, but I will leave that as an exercise to the reader.

mātugām occurs in SN 39 times! But not before SN16 and only once after SN37, in fact, 33 out of the 39 occurrences happen in SN37. So the term never occurs in the poetry, and occurs almost universally in the “chapter about being derogatory towards women”.

So from the start, this term as a way of describing women is practically unkown to the actual long prose (DN and MN) of the prose collections.

It is far more common in the “short sutta” collecitons of SN and AN, and vastly more common in the VInaya.

But leaving that aside for the moment, what about rucci? a five letter word meaning grant staisfaction, surely that will be littered all over the canon?

Nope.

It never occurs in DN.
It never occurs in MN.
It never occurs in SN.

It occurs in this sutta in AN, in the Jataka stories (again, even the conservatives here admit these are late) and occurs 16 times in the Vinaya.

what about dummanā? people must have been sad and miserable all over the place in the early prose, right?

Nope.

dummanā occurs twice in DN in the same sutta, guess which sutta? then nowhere again AN, the Theri, the Apadanas (again, everyone accepts these are late) and the Vinaya.

I will leave the rest of the sutta for you to explore.

It is late.

It uses language that is much more likely to occur in the Vinaya than in the bulk of the prose suttas that form the first layer of the sutta-vinaya-abhidhamma layer cake.

It is I guess up to you whether you can make the leap to accepting that SN and AN where most likely composed and edited hundreds of years after the Buddha died, but that is the argument here. The language has changed so radically from the bulk of DN and MN that it is a simple excersize to find words that are unknown to the approximately half a million words of diverse narrative prose in those two collecitons, but are common to the supposedly shorter and simpler and shorn of anecdote SN (and AN), and find that those words commonly recur in the known to be later Vinaya, Jataka, Vibangha and so on.

Once you see it you can’t unsee it, and once you see it you see it everywhere.

I didn’t need to do any research for this post, I just knew because the content was so misogynistic and stupid that it couldn’t be the Buddha and therefore I just knew that it would contain vocabularry that would identify it as such.

The sutta gave itself away with literally the first distinctive word in it. And then with the second, random, non descript word I picked to investigate further.

Metta.

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This is a technical term. Of sāmaṇera.

As far as I know, it’s junior to a Bhikkhu ordained that day. Use the term junior monk for Bhikkhu ordained that day is better.

As far as I am concerned Bhikkhunī are higher ranking compared to sāmaṇera, novice monks.

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It is called conceit

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I would think ranking in terms of dhamma aspect should be the quality or state of being skillful in virtue , samadhi and wisdom and not the same as worldly status or superficiality of one’s seniority . A layman arahant would have the same quality of a renunciate arahant .

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This thread is a Vinaya discussion. Spiritual attainments aren’t relevant in this matter. The attainment of all arahants is the same. This is not the point here.

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