A History of Indian Literature v2.c19.s3.t1.109

v2.c19.s3.t1.109

A large number of Suttas deal with women, of whom the Buddhist monks, like the priests and saints of all other religions, have little good to say. Only Ānanda, the favourite disciple of Buddha, was always an enthusiastic champion of women. It was at his intercession that the Master, after long resistance and even then unwillingly, gave permission for the founding of an order of nuns—a partiality for which, according to the tradition,¹ he was still called to account at the council of Rājagaha. Once, so it is related in the "Section of four" (IV, 80), Ānanda, like a modern advocate of the emancipation of women, asked the Master: