Peter Skilling will give a lecture entitled "Women in the vanguard? Reflections on early Indian Buddhism" at the "2013 Chulalongkorn Asian Heritage Forum: The Emergence and Heritage of Asian Women Intellectuals" organized by the Institute of Thai Studies on 10-11 September 2013 at Imperial Queens Park Hotel, Bangkok.

Abstract
Buddhist women were active participants in the construction of  early Buddhism in India. Nuns and laywomen were among the sponsors of monuments, monasteries, and statues of the Buddha across India, and a collection of verses attributed to nuns is among the earliest documents of female literature in India, or, perhaps, worldwide. Were women merely donors, or were they also intellectual innovators? The paper reflects on this difficult and complex question by examining inscriptions and early Buddhist texts.


 conference