Monastic Discipline for the Buddhist Nuns

The introduction discusses the place of the Mahāsāṃghika-Vinaya in Buddhist literature, the development of different Vinaya traditions, and the historical transmission of the Mahāsāṃghika text. Hirakawa explains that Vinaya literature preserves the rules by which early Buddhist communities were governed and that the precepts are divided into those for monks and those for nuns. The text also explains the relationship between the Chinese version and the Sanskrit version, noting that although they belong to different manuscript histories, their contents show close agreement. The main body is organized around the disciplinary categories for bhikṣuṇīs: the practices of the Buddhist nun, the eight Pārājika offenses, the nineteen Saṃghātiśeṣa offenses, the thirty Niḥsargika-Pācattika offenses, the one hundred and forty-one Pācattika offenses, the eight Pratideśanīya offenses, and miscellaneous rules. The volume ends with a conclusion, translator’s note on the Mahāsāṃghika-Vinaya, and word index.