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Budhism & Social Justice
189
authorisation of them all. No doubt, these rules were enough to make nuns remebmer that they were inherently inferior to monks because of their gender. In an instance, Mahaprajapati Gotami requested the Buddha to apply the rule of seniority for the monks and nuns according to the relative statuses and not according to their sexes, it was turned down by Buddha. Buddha's attitude towards women is observed in Vinaya, where the Bhikkhus are represented as bringing their questions and defficulties directly to him but the nuns had to represent through the bhikkhus. The number and position of nuns were fast declining in the Kuśāņa period (Chakraborthy 1973:222). Not only this, in early Buddhism women were generally regarded as unreliable faithless and no better than household possessions. It can be seen while advocating the cult of asceticism, where women are considered as the greatest obstacle in the path of virtue. The Saundarananda of Ashvaghosha makes Buddha pronounce that women are like envenomed creepers, like unsheathed swords and like dens of horribe reptiles. It is also to note that in early Mahāyāna female Bodhisattvas were very rare. In the Mahavagga the Buddha advises Ānanda not to see women, and if it beomes necessary then not to speak to them; and if it become necessary to speak, then to keep wide awake (Indra 1940:223) Buddha cherished the ideal of the subservience of wife as he had described seven kinds of wives. Four of these as virtuous, who act as mother, sister, companion and slave, they go to heaven, the remaining three kinds of non-virtuous wives behave like slayer, robber or mistress, they go to hell. As a result of his teaching, Sujata, the daughter-in-law of Anādhapindika chose to become a slave like wife. These are few instances which focus on the status of women in Buddhism. One can not firmly say that women really were as equal as men. The motion of social justice to women thus, is not very clear.
Let us now turn to the social justice towards slaves in the society, Buddhist literature is full of references to the existence of slavery as a social institution. He himself was served by slaves and suggested a code of conduct for them too. These codes merely exhorted the master to be merciful to their slaves (Sinha 1983 : 83) The entire Triptaka is free from any suggestion for their betterment. Rather he is said to have
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