3.2.1 - Revival of the Theravada order of nuns

What Was Being Revived

The "Theravada order of nuns" means the fully ordained female monastic order, the bhikkhuni Sangha, within the Theravada tradition. The debate was not about whether Buddhist women could be devout, learned or socially useful. Theravada societies already had female renunciants, such as dasa sil matas in Sri Lanka and mae chis in Thailand. The sharper issue was whether women could again receive full monastic ordination under the Vinaya and be recognised as bhikkhunis.

This distinction matters because full ordination affects status, training, authority and the relationship with lay Buddhists. A bhikkhuni can be seen as part of the monastic field of merit in a way that a lay renunciant may not be. For supporters of revival, restoring bhikkhuni ordination was therefore a restoration of a complete Buddhist community. For opponents, ordination could not be restored unless the required monastic procedure was valid.

The AQA wording asks for "the debate leading to the revival", so the centre of the lesson is the argument before and around the late-1990s breakthrough, not a general survey of women in Buddhism.

The Vinaya Problem

The debate begins with the Vinaya, the monastic discipline. In the traditional narrative, Mahapajapati Gotami, the Buddha's aunt and foster mother, asked for women to be allowed to go forth. Ananda then asked whether women were capable of attaining the stages of awakening; the answer in the text is yes. The same narrative also includes the eight rules of respect, often called garudhammas, which place bhikkhunis in a subordinate relationship to bhikkhus.

For A-level use, the key point is not to memorise the whole passage. It is to see why the passage can support different arguments:

The historical problem was that the Theravada bhikkhuni lineage died out in Sri Lanka around the eleventh century, after disruption caused by war and famine. The bhikkhu order was later restored with help from monks from Siam, but there was no surviving Theravada bhikkhuni Sangha to perform the women's part of full ordination. That created the central technical obstacle: if full ordination requires both a bhikkhu Sangha and a bhikkhuni Sangha, how can the bhikkhuni Sangha be revived when no recognised Theravada bhikkhunis exist?

The Case Against Revival

Opposition to revival was often a Vinaya argument. Conservative Theravada authorities argued that full bhikkhuni ordination requires dual-Sangha ordination: first by a bhikkhuni Sangha and then by a bhikkhu Sangha. If the Theravada bhikkhuni Sangha no longer existed, the necessary quorum could not be formed. On this view, a broken lineage cannot simply restart itself.

The second objection concerned lineage and identity. The late-1990s revival used East Asian bhikkhunis, especially from Korean, Taiwanese or Chinese contexts, to supply the women's side of the ordination. Opponents often described this as a Mahayana involvement and argued that Theravada ordination should not depend on nuns from non-Theravada settings. This objection was partly about legal validity and partly about protecting Theravada identity.

A third objection was social and institutional. In Thailand, the official male Sangha had long resisted female ordination, and a 1928 restriction barred Thai monks from participating in ordaining women. Some Buddhists argued that reform should improve the status of mae chis or other female renunciants rather than introduce bhikkhuni ordination. Some women also worried that full ordination could bring stricter rules and greater subordination to monks.

The Case For Revival

Supporters of revival argued that the problem should be interpreted from inside Buddhism, not only through modern rights language. Their case was that the Buddha had allowed a bhikkhuni order, that women were capable of awakening, and that a complete Buddhist community traditionally includes monks, nuns, laymen and laywomen. From this perspective, revival was not a new invention but a repair of a historical loss.