So, welcome everybody.
This is the fifth lecture in our course on Asian Buddhist women hosted by the Numerical
Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of Hamburg in collaboration with the Diamond
Program Institute of Liberal Arts in Taiwan.
And it is my great pleasure today to welcome Lilian Hamblin, who is going to speak to us
on the topic of depictions of women in Myanmar Ganakutis during the second millennium.
Lilian Hamblin was an assistant professor in the Department of History of the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem and most recently taught Myanmar history at the University of
Rangoon in Yangon.
She received her PhD in American History in 1977 and is the author and co-author of several
books and articles.
An article on the story of the Buddhist eye teeth relics in the context of early pre-modern
Burma is forthcoming.
She is the trustee of the Burma Studies Foundation and an editor of the Journal of Burma Studies.
And with this introduction, I now hand over to Lilian.
Thank you for this kind introduction.
I am delighted to deliver this talk and show some very rarely seen images.
I hope you will find this material intriguing, but ask that you withhold the questions until
the end.
Before moving forward, I'd like to make a number of general remarks.
First of all, I am a historian and not a hanging judge, which means, among much else,
trying not to import current notions when reconstructing the past in an attempt to make
it relevant.
This is not meant to whitewash the past's iniquities, but to take it on its own terms,
which in this context prompts me to avoid, most of the time, one category of big words
like Buddhism, Theravada and religion, mainly because they are problematic in this setting.
The second category of words I lay aside are the ones shaping our discourse derived from
postmodernist thought.
We may indeed be better off thanks to sensitivities our predecessors lacked, but progressive notions
don't help us understand the people whose sensibilities we try, as good historians should,
to recover.
I also want us to remember that what we will be looking at is an idealized version for
good or bad of womanhood in this setting.
By idealized version, I mean people's ideas rather than practices, how they ideationally
conceived the female as opposed to how females were actually regarded in real life.
The two, of course, had to be related.
Real notions, by definition, contend with the reality they inform.
But given the murkiness of Myanmar's past and the fact that its social and intellectual
history is totally unwritten, little is known about women's status in the pre-modern era.
What we can know because of a curious practice popular in Myanmar for a millennium is how
womanhood was conceived in light of the Dhamma.
That is the case because that Dhamma received a massive amount of visibility.
That visibility materialized in the form of depictions decorating revered structures.
This is what I will talk about today.
I will begin by looking at depictions of women in an early Burmese kingdom.
As these women had a long pictorial thereafter, we will also see how they changed and yet
remained the same.
Representing on a very long trajectory is legitimate because of certain built-in continuities.
One of these continuities is people's adherence to inherited revered images.
Depictions illustrating people's profound beliefs change very slowly, even when what
people see in them has moved on.
The kingdom we will look at first was called Arimardana or Phukam, Pagan.
Its ceremonial center was in Myanmar's dry zone.
This is where it can be found on the map.
After that center moved, new dynasties were established and lives changed profoundly.
But the significance of this I will touch upon only at the very end of my talk.
My lecture today has three main parts, context agenda and paradigmatic examples.
I will begin with the initial historical context for the depictions.
That initial context was the decor of the Pagan kingdom's most revered constructions.
This is what a 13th century structure looked like.
We will see what was inside of it shortly.
That decor that we will see was made up of images that were visual translations of revered
materials.
The images were almost always inscribed, ensuring correct identification.
Here is one example.
These practices remained the same for a millennium.
There are examples of many other later constructions, which justifies my linking these centuries
as pearls on a string.
The agenda I will talk about explains why these depictions appeared where they did.
That had to do with featuring a visualized Dhamma in the public domain.
Why this was done, we don't really know.
The practice began early around the middle of the 11th century and was sustained ever
since.
Given what was shown and how it was done, encourages me to speculate that it happened
on behalf of an agenda, that it was meant to do good as contemporaries interpreted that
term.
The visual translations transmitted information to encourage acceptable behaviors.
In so doing, they articulated their community's socialization patterns.
In other words, to encourage ways of life appropriate for a righteous society.
In the most superficial sense, sort of Buddhism 101 term, that agenda meant to ease suffering.
And these two remained and remains unchanged.
Their component justifying lumping together 10th century.
Easing suffering involved many things, but in the most general and simple minded sense,
it encouraged employing a carrots and sticks method defining a moral path.
And it was that moral path that actually received much publicity.
Talk about easing suffering given the available evidence we have was scarce.
And that's very interesting to think about.
To illustrate that moral path and with it the carrots and sticks system, for example,
it made sense to show what hell's looked like or else what luxurious lives in heavenly
mansions promised.
This late depiction of King Nemes' voyages encapsulates both the hells in the lower left
corner and a floating pavilion housing a happy female divinity above.
To illustrate this approved moral path, stories about women were featured for their own good
but also because of their pivotal roles in how lives were lived.
Which stories and with them which women were featured changed in time as did the carrots
and sticks depictions.
Some women once ignored become visible.
For example, the bikulis for whom no Pagan era images survive.
This is from an 18th century construction.
It seems that the order of the nuns became more important as time went on or else only
in later centuries did incorporating nuns in revered constructions become necessary.
Other women come to appear later in what canonically are purely male settings.
This is another curious development reflecting changing patterns or perceptions of womanhood.
Or at the very least the necessity to show their presence.
As in this 18th century depiction of the first recitation as the venerable bikul prefers
to call the sangiti, we will see what this says about how the Buddha's word was adapting
to changing times and conceptualizations of womanhood with it.
In the third part of my talk, we will meet very briefly three of the paradigmatic women
illustrating that moral path.
One Siddhartha's mother Mahamaya, she is the one on the left.
Her sister Gautami, here she is in her role as the founder of the Order of the Nuns.
And the third paradigmatic example will be provided by the santara's wife Madhi.
Here she is departing with her family for the forest.
In the end, I will touch briefly on the very late pre-modern period.
One more preliminary remark needs to be made.
While almost all depictions we will see were flattering to women, some, as I will show,
were not.
For example, in this 18th century image, the Burman carries his diminutive wife and children
accentuating their dependency.
But I also add that such images have no earlier counterparts.
Pagan constructions never featured what are seemingly lay subjects, that is illustrating
topics unrelated to authorized sources.
Why?
We don't really know.
What later structures did include such images as this evidence attests.
In other words, the spaces where the Dhamma was on display were flexible and capable of
changing.
And such changes reflected alterations in how teachings were defined and depicted.
We can trace in these shifts subtle fluctuations in attitudes towards women in real life.
Another unflattering depiction from a later period is the hanging maidens tree.
Women are fruit to be picked for pleasure and consumption.
A concept guaranteed to raise the blood pressure of any right-minded modern feminist.
What is this and where does it appear?
It is an 18th century insertion in the Vesanta Rajataka.
The hanging maidens were said to distract magicians from disturbing Mahdi in the forest.
It is not in the Vesanta Ras Pali version and in fact is an import from Persia that
becomes visible in Burma following Thai influence.
This by the way gives you an idea of how complicated the spread of concepts and ideas and also
images actually was.
Now it's a pejorative image, can't get away from that.
Whether it meant to express actual attitudes towards womanhood is highly unlikely.
The Himavanta, as the Burmese call that region, where the tree grows is a mysterious realm
where everyday rules don't apply.
The insert also indicates the Vesanta Ras flexibility and this reminds us of another
point that the word of the Buddha in human hands was pliable in perceptions of womanhood
likewise.
Negative depictions of women, as I said, were fairly rare and that indicates furthermore
a conscious choice to ignore some teachings in favor of others that better fitted the
real world, the real world as opposed to the world of cloistered monasteries.
This too is a point I will repeat later on.
Some Pali texts, as all of you know, are badly misogynist but in real life women were major
pillars of the monastic system and profound devotees of the Buddha in Southeast Asia from
very early on and as always and everywhere half the population.
Burmese depictions underscored their importance like showing how women facilitated the Asa
Pazenadi Sadhana, King Pazenadi's incomparable donation.
Here is the segment showing women's pivotal roles as producers and donors.
It needs to be added also that it is Malika Pazenadi's wife who initiates this stupendous
deed in the first place.
The santara's great donation recalled on the night of awakening highlighted women's involvement
and depictions showed this.
The Sambula Jataka, this is number 519 for those of you who will look it up, features
a faithful wife rescuing her husband from leprosy among much else.
Many Adra Jatakas made the same point suggesting that the bodhisattva without his wife's support
would have had an even more difficult road to follow.
This nuanced attitude towards womanhood, stressing its attractive features while also
occasionally recalling the opposite as we shall see, reflected how the teachings were
meant to inform people's lives.
We need to remember that what for us is a religion was something else once upon a time
which we can call a hegemonic ideology, two complicated terms that actually mean something
very fundamental and that is a hegemonic ideology is the explanation by which people make sense
of their lives.
That ideology in the Burmese context used the Dhamma's ideas and vocabulary.
It delineated a moral path informed by definitions of right and wrong, which encouraged featuring
women in approved roles, for example as nuns or as followers of the Buddha's instructions.
The depictions show women who were important for the moral path because seeing them helped
mold people's self-perceptions, but also because it brought them closer to the Buddha.
The reason this was so was that this moral path was visualized primarily through the
Buddha biography as we shall see.
One result of this linkage was that all the women we will now encounter were somehow related
to the Buddha in his many lives.
This reminds us of how crucial the concept of nidhana as context or condition for comprehending
a teaching was for this path.
Context served not only commentators struggling with the meanings inherent in the Buddha's
words, but also to make sense of the narratives those words articulated.
The women's stories could be understood best in relationship to Gautama's biography.
The context for their experiences and also the authority for what it was their experiences
transmitted.
Devotees making sense of these stories thereby not only encountered identifiable types, but
were also thereby given a means to bridge the immense gap separating them from the tasagata.
Where did the Burmese get these ideas and practices from?
Its ideational components they inherited from the commentarial and sub-commentarial corpus
with which the Pali Canon always traveled.
But in addition to this tandem, there were also instantiations elsewhere to be copied.
To illustrate the Buddha biography, early on in the Buddhist world, images were used.
Yet because no one knew what people looked like during the Buddha's lifetimes, depictions
were patterned after contemporaries.
In various regions of India, they looked Indian and in Myanmar, they eventually looked Burmese.
And as people's appearance changed over time, so did the imagery.
Maya Siddhartha's mother began her early Burmese career resembling an Indian fertility
goddess.
The reason was that the early Burmese copied Indian patterns to begin with.
This is another example from the 13th century.
In due course, Maya was Burmanized.
By the 19th century, she resembled ideal Kornbaung dynasty queens.
Such visible changes often mask other more profound ideational shifts including textual
interpolations indicating the Dhamma's adaptability.
An 18th century Sankhapala Jataka illustration, this is number 524 for those of you who will
look it up, featured the king of Benares and queens.
Here they are, a visual interpolation since while the king is a character in the story,
the queens were not.
A 19th century Amara Devi, Mahosata's wife, wearing flip-flops, here they are, also exemplifies
this practice.
In other words, to give women visibility and make their images accessible to viewers, over
the centuries artists changed how they were seen and often invented their presence even
when textually untenable.
Such images actually teach us more about how contemporaries interpreted the Buddha's
word as opposed to that word in and of itself in the abstract.
Settings that translated the Dhamma for centuries into pictures literally show us what this
means.
Dhamma changed greatly over a thousand years but the spaces where women's stories and
depictions appeared remained constant.
These are 18th century structures.
They varied in size and in much else but ideationally a 12th century and an 18th century building
were comparable.
Other donors, although very different beings who lived in different times, would nonetheless
have recognized the impulse that impelled their sponsorship.
They even used identical words repeating the same Pali-derived phrases even if most likely
the meanings of these phrases shifted.
In other words, the vocabulary of the agenda that such structures serviced remained anchored
in the Buddha's word.
The depicted women always appeared in public spaces displaying the Dhamma that is in the
interiors of revered construction.
Here is the interior of a 12th century endowment and we will see its details several times
later.
These interiors that functioned on behalf of an agenda granted women substantial visibility.
Their visibility bespoke societal expectations, approved ways of living and lessons to be
learned.
The carrots and sticks system in action.
On behalf of its lessons, illustrations of rewards or punishment depending on intentions
materialized.
Scholars credit the Pali Dhamma with propagating what they have called an ethic of intent.
The Burmese since the 12th century agreed.
In the Boridata Jataka, a Garuda fights with the Naga.
When the hungry Garuda tries to eat the snake, the Naga accidentally uproots the tree, killing
it.
The Garuda feels guilty and asks a hermit about it.
The hermit articulates this ethic of intent.
As the Garuda wanted food not to kill the tree, he is not a killer.
It's actually much more complicated than that but for our purposes we can leave it at that.
Women's matters mattered and with them good and bad behaviors.
Women's depictions in these structures showed the difference.
So first, a bit of history.
During the first millennium, competing texts, lineages and practices filtered into Southeast
Asia and with them the initial depictions of the Dhamma.
By the 11th century, after what most likely were periods of competition among various
paths, the Pali version of the Buddha's word was the apparent winner in the Burmese, Piu
and Mon speaking regions.
These were the main population groups identified here by their vernaculars that constituted
the early Burmese polities.
Pagan as a kingdom lasted from the 9th to the end of the 13th century and here the Dhamma
in its then Pali version first became a hegemonic ideology.
Pagan first unveiled its ideational loyalty in spectacular fashion in the form of big
stupas.
The fact that the kingdom was prompted to do this needs to be explained but for lack
of time I will spare you the digression.
On their outer skin, the giant stupa, this one, and all its big sized successors, this
is from the 11th century, featured all the Buddha Gautama's previous lives as redacted
in several formats of the Jyataka Sakatha, a pattern unseen as far as we know to that
extent anywhere else.
Each plaque reconstituted one's story, generating a fascinating juxtaposition between the shape
of the stupa and all that it represented in Gautama's previous existences.
The depictions were largely invisible and uninformative.
These images, as you can see, are uninscribed and abstract.
No one knows which stories they relate.
The move, however, was precedent setting.
If using one text this way was legitimate, using others was also.
In Myanmar as a result, harnessing depictions to transmit the Pali-articulated Dhamma became
very popular.
This occurred when Pagan's stupas came to be supplemented by what contemporaries called
caves or in the Pali perfumed chambers, a Buddha's dwelling.
This is what a 12th century structure looked like from the outside.
They were completely decorated for the next 10 centuries.
This is what the interior of an 18th century structure looks like.
The statue is a recent addition, but the depictions are from the 18th century.
And this is where women featured in their roles as instantiations of Dhammic or non-Dhammic
behavior.
The structure's interiors turned public Dhamma spaces into magnificent visual libraries,
giving stories and their female protagonists great publicity.
This attests to their important social status, their ideational tasks as role models, and
as we shall see, as almost co-equal partners of their male consorts in sustaining the
Sasana.
If we did not have the Pali texts and relied only on depictions, we would think that the
Dhamma was in the vanguard of female empowerment, as in some ways it was.
As in this 19th century version of what women were allowed to do, for example, to smoke
like their male counterparts during Siddhartha's and Yasodara's wedding ceremony.
The image is also interesting, just as a side remark, in the sense that we know historically
that tobacco arrives in Asia and in Europe only in the post-15th century.
In other words, whatever they were smoking in the time of the Buddha Gautama, it could
not have been tobacco.
But anyway, that's what the picture showed.
Such empowering tasks are among the services that hegemonic ideologies provide.
And since these decors featured on behalf of lay donors, devotees, and society as a
whole, depictions elided abstractions and doctrinal concerns and were made user-friendly.
Women were not told to be Buddhists or taught the four truths, but they were urged to live
well.
So what did this mean?
In the pre-modern world, it meant discharging duties peculiar to their gender and stations
and taming their wayward selves.
This is not the answer we would like to hear.
But in the 11th century, in fact, until very recently, this was known as common sense.
The agenda's objectives, in other words, were social and individual.
They needed to be met on behalf of the common good that was linked to individual goods,
the well-being of each of the king's subjects informing society as a whole.
The system of carrots and sticks, promises and threats showed how meritorious behavior
was defined and rewarded and its opposite punished.
As in these abstract depictions of hells on the bottom of the screen, from the middle
of the 11th century, made much more elaborate in a 13th century petavato story visualized
on top.
This reminds us also that narratives spoken and visual are meant to interact with their
users, which also explains why abstractions, as these early examples indicate, were shortly
displaced by elaborate storytelling depictions.
Growing societal complexities demanded new socialization technologies that more sophisticated
visual narratives provided.
So what did the carrots promise?
They promised ideally orderly lives in the present and stupendously happy ones in the
future.
Like in this depiction of two female devies in their luxurious pavilions, rewards for
meritorious deeds on earth from the early 12th century.
Pagan kings proclaimed their willingness and capacity to open the gates of heaven for all.
None of them said this explicitly.
And by saying this, the kings targeted their female subjects also.
The perfumed chambers, the cores, which the kings and their allies sponsored, showed women
how to get there.
The fact that later kings articulated their promises in more modest terms is a clue to
us that things were changing, but more about that further on.
Showing how to get to the heavens was determined by Pagan's usable canon, an academic term
referring to those portions of the Buddha's word that was actually in circulation as opposed
to gathering dusts in monastic chests.
The following texts were used, and I list them not to bore you with a series of titles,
but because they show us Pagan's usable canon and thus where the depictions came from.
And with these images, the authority justifying approved definitions of womanhood.
In other words, we glimpse a sliver of our subject's ideational work.
The most popular were the Jatakatakata, sometimes in the 547 stories format, and in one case
covering 550 lives.
Even more important was the Buddha Vamsa, with its story of Sumedha's recipient of
the Buddha Deepankara's prediction.
Notice the total absence of women in this early 12th century image.
You will see a very different interpretation shortly.
The influence of the Buddha Vamsa on Myanmar's intellectual development was enormous, providing
patterns its chroniclers followed until modern times.
Like its companion text, which was also used, classifying the perfections, they served
as frameworks taming the complexities of the Buddha Gautama's existence.
The suttas of the four Nikayas were kept usually out of sight.
Their visually secondary status substantiates my assumption that it was narratives among
other reasons for all the women in them that serviced the hegemonic ideology most efficiently.
Up front were texts like the Melinda Panya, the Vimanavatu and the Petavatu, the Vinya
and the Dhammapada, the Mahavamsa, and by the 13th century, perhaps, the Sottataki Mahanidana
are also used, as was the Anagata Vamsa, and women had parts in them all.
The depictions grounded in these texts were at all times the Dhamma's visible public face.
Although Buddha Gosa was ambivalent about visual information, seeing was useful for
knowledge processing, and knowledge processing, in turn, was useful to generate desired responses.
What would that have been, you may ask?
My desired responses were meant skills for righteous living, not to teach people the
dependent co-origination formula or the meanings of nirvana.
Skills to live well required cultivation.
Humans were believed to be born with innate capacities that needed to be prompted into
being.
A sophisticated psychology is behind all the images that you are seeing today that deserves
a lecture of its own, but in short, the stories explained how innate capacities could be cultivated.
One hint of this process accounts for this early 12th century image.
This is a depiction of Ashoka's Feast of the Eyes, a great festival.
Mahakala, here he is, the last being to see the Tassagata, created his image, this is
the image for the Emperor Ashoka, that's him here.
Pagan knew the story from the Mahavamsa.
It confirmed what it also knew from many other sources, that gazing on the right object
was potentially transformational.
Many stories showed how beings were tamed by the very sight of the Buddha, like the
story of Nala Giri or the taming of the ogre Alawaka.
Encountering a Buddha image or a story associated with his existences was not the same as meeting
a live Buddha, but it was still pretty good.
Depictions, in other words, were tools to alter viewers' inner being.
When devotees witnessed instances of societal carrots and sticks, they learned about proper
behavior and duties.
Make supporting one's parents, as in the enormously popular Suvana Sama story.
This is a short sliver you're looking at, part of the very long and detailed tier narrating
almost all the episodes of what is a very long narrative, and it comes from the early
12th century.
Its female protagonist, the Bodhisattva's mother, was a study in contradictions.
Her blindness was caused by greedy cruelty, but she was a means for her son's Buddhahood.
Her pathetic dependence resonated in settings where few had what we call agency.
There was much in the story that viewers could relate to accounting for its potency.
This is a compressed 18th century version.
Such stories highlighted morality and behavior rather than doctrines.
One's lot depended on karma, but rather than get entangled in imponderables, the image stories
were about deeds, intentions, and acts that had individual and societal consequences.
For example, in matters concerning adultery, here the monkey tells his followers what his
punishment was for coveting another man's wife.
This is from the Narada Jataka, and it's an early 12th century illustration.
By contrast, a woman giving a flower to the Buddha instantiated a wonderful thing to do,
or else being generous.
Not because support of the Sangha sustained monasteries, it did, but because of the good
it did to doers.
Beautifully attired women donors appeared in later decors, showing women's importance,
especially when engaged in devotional activities, but in others as well as we shall see.
Some female donors were famous.
Like Malika, King Pasenadi's wife, shown in this 19th century depiction donating a
magnificent cloth at the time of the Buddha's cremation.
The cloth featured a peacock design whose feathers produced the sounds of music, which
is why she is holding a peacock.
Here he is, or else Kosala Devi, Bimbisara's wife, or else this female inhabitant of Uttarakuru,
here she is, donating food to the visiting Buddha.
In the perfume chambers, the Gautama story, where the women appeared, enveloped the Buddha's
statue in the Mara Vijaya pose.
At the moment when the fate of the universe was in the balance, a female intervened, Vasundari,
the goddess of the earth, here she is, is absent from the Jatakatha, Kattani, Dhanakatha,
and was thus ignored in more textually minded pagan.
But as the Burmese became less constrained by some texts, her popularity grew.
Vasundari's water, squeezed out of her hair, validated the bodhisattva's merit and drowned
Mara's army.
A woman ensured a better tomorrow for the universe in its entirety, the most stupendous
achievement imaginable.
It is she who, in the Burmese context, keeps track of good deeds, those sealed by pouring
water.
I even found one 18th century donor who wanted to be remembered by Vasundari precisely for
this.
Vasundari is only one of several females whose presence saves the day, like Manimekala, who
saves the drowning bodhisattva Mahajanaka.
This is a 19th century image, and here is an 18th century one.
Or the goddess of the umbrella, who facilitates the bodhisattva's attainment of the
perfections, whether as Temiya or Vidura.
In Vidura, here she is, she helps the king cheat when gambling, which moves the story
along.
In Temiya, here she is, she wonders whether the bodhisattva will withstand temptations,
which he does.
The women are almost naked, here you can see them, this is Temiya, and they are trying
very hard to seduce him.
We will see later on other treatments of women as temptresses and why they are featured.
Another consequential female is Sujata, who offers the bodhisattva milk rice at a pivotal
pre-awakening moment.
She first appears in the Burmese setting in this early 12th century image.
But as the Buddha biography was ever an expanding work in progress, more and more itself is
one of these scenes.
The depictions cover the tailing of Malagiri, the twin miracle, the first sermon, and other
things.
But the point I'm trying to make is that there were very few women in these scenes, really
only Maya, and that's her, the Nativity image.
By the 12th century, this visual biography means really only Maya, and that's her, the
Nativity image, covering many more pre- and post-awakening events.
Hagan inherited how did this happen, that the frameworks were constantly being covered
in many more pre- and post-awakening events.
The number of scenes grew from 8 to at least 80.
It's a huge expansion, and later many more.
As illustrations presenting the sticks and carrots system expanded, so did the stories
of women demonstrating it.
One example of how a reshaped Buddha biography made more room for women was the rainy retreats
format that covered the many years of the Buddha's itineracy, in which the great early
biographies, whether Sanskrit or Pali, omitted.
This is one Vesali version, Vesali retreat version, and the women are right here.
Later images stress women's participation in them, as in this depiction of Thavatimsa,
the chief of the gods and his four wives, here are the wives, an enormously popular
theme in later Buddhist art, or in this Varinza rainy retreat, where a Brahmin attends upon
his wives rather than the Buddha.
One image of the first rainy retreat in Deer Park from the 18th century also presents females.
Here they are.
Who they are, I have no idea.
Women's growing visibility and the expanding contours of the Buddha's biography indicate
that lay devotions were changing, and with them the Dhamma's role in daily lives.
This brought more overt attention to women's roles.
Depictions showing women's food donations to monks became standard.
These were those of elegant ladies, dancers, weavers, often pursuing productive and socially
significant occupations.
Women were even inserted into settings from which they were previously absent, as in the
case of the third recitation, to show also the wife of Ashoka, here she is, the convener
of the third recitation in the Pali narrative.
Elsewhere, Jataka stories made a point to feature women, as in the audience witnessing
Buridata's tortures.
Even depictions of the Buddha Gautama's predecessors moved with the times, showing the women in
their pre-Buddahood lives.
As here, regarding the future Buddha, Vipati, as the Burmese pronouncing, copying the Buddhavamsa.
Or else here, presenting the story of Saranankara, derived perhaps from the Sottataki Mahanidana,
where these early three Buddhas have more detailed biographies.
Another woman who attains visibility missing before is Chinchamana.
She personified what women were not to be.
Here the painter made sure that her fake bump on the belly was visible.
As was her punishment, she sinks into the earth.
Where did she come from?
In the post-13th century, the Buddhas' so-called eight victories were grouped in verses that
became very popular in Burma, which made Chinchamana famous and infamous, sometimes
prompting the painters to show her remorsefulness.
Which is not in the text as we have them, but that was clearly a Burmese clause.
Burmese's renown thus reflected changing textualities and shifting societal norms.
She became one of the archetypes of the bad female, her punishment showing the agendas
sticks.
Other popular examples of what was defined as negative women behavior, female behavior,
so them being shrews, greedy beings and temptresses.
Amitatapa, Jujaka's wife, was an example of what wives should not be, pushy, complaining
and short-sighted.
Women as temptresses feature in many stories, as in this 18th century depiction of Mara's
sculptures, beautiful in their own eyes.
This is how they see themselves, but old and ugly in the eyes of the Buddha.
This is how he sees them, the crepit, ugly, walking with a stick.
Other examples of evil women featured in the telepatha, Jataka, this is from the 13th
century, here they are ogresses eating their victims for supper, or else as nalimiki failing
to tempt the ascetic, much like alambusa who tries hard, but eventually is shown the door.
Or else again, in the mahosata riddle about the fake husband, this is from the 19th century.
I think all these images were mainly warnings to monks about female deceits.
But perfume chamber decors were not for monks, who by definition were exceptional.
For them, all bodies, male and female, were vile.
The perfume chamber's socially conscious sensibility preferred featuring women positively.
Like the famous female supporters of the Buddha, again this is Malika with her peacock cloth,
Pasenadi's, Kosala Devi Pasenadi's wife, here, and here is another image of her, together
with Bimbisara giving food to the Buddha.
They and others were portrayed as loving mothers, husbands, helpmates, and often smarter than
their men.
For every Chinchamana, there was Ruja, who in the Narada Jataka, that's the beginning
of the story, saved her father from wrong views.
What was meant by wrong views shifted.
In Pagan images, naked ascetics referenced the Jains.
By the 18th century, heresy also meant lust, as in this picture of Ruja's father fondling,
as you can see here, two of his queens.
Another exemplar was Sumita, the future Rahula Mata, who appears in the Apadana, a curious
Pali text used more often in later centuries, although I have evidence that it was used
in Pagan as well.
Sumita is absent from the Buddha Vamsa and the Jataka Thutaka, which is why Pagan omitted
her.
But as the Buddha biography expanded, Sumita came into her own, always shown giving flowers
to Sumita while making her own wish in the Buddha Dikankara's presence.
And so she became Rahula Mata, that also features frequently in Pagan in Myanmar depictions.
This happened when the Pagan version of the Buddha biography shed its Sanskrit vestiges.
In the Sanskrit version, Siddhartha is born from Maya's hip, this is a 13th century version
what I mean, and Rahula is born on the night of awakening and is named after the demon
Rahu.
In the Pali narrative, however, Rahula is born prior to the prince's famous departure
and his name has different connotations.
The departure thereby became a favorite image to manipulate viewer sensitivities and to
show the magnitude of the sacrifice, which is why grand depictions of Rahula Mata's wedding
to Siddhartha were often followed by heartbreaking images of Siddhartha's last look at his sleeping
wife and baby.
Here he is peeking through the curtain.
The carrots and sticks system was all encompassing, which it needed to be, to be a hegemonic ideology,
which is why these famous women had many lesser counterparts, among them the heroines of the
Bhima Navatu tales, often poor and mistreated.
This is one Bhima Navatu story from the 13th century.
For today's scholars, again, their tales are monastic propaganda, but in Burma they were
about instinctive goodness.
Like the child in this 13th century depiction, who drops a grain of sand in the Buddha's
bow, later becoming a shoka.
Heavenly mansion protagonists were often life's victims.
In a setting where lack of agency was the norm, that's how it was for almost everyone.
But their gestures gained fantastic rewards, like the woman who shared her rice scum and
became a goddess.
By the 19th century, as one inscription said, being an Abhidhamma listener sufficed, which
says something about the status of the Abhidhamma in 19th century, Burmese thought it would
not have been said in the 11th century.
Incorporating these women's stories in depictions was empowering, flattened out the social hierarchy
and showed the Dhamma's all-encompassing scope.
Associating heavenly mansion goddesses, here they are, with the Bodhisattva's dreams on
the night of enlightenment, or awakening.
And two Freilich stupas, in effect, said it all.
Here is another version of that image, and it's a bit more schematic.
This is the Buddha to be reclining on top of the universe, dreaming his dreams.
And these are three female divinities in their heavenly mansions.
Now the women whose depictions we have seen thus far represented a broad social spectrum.
Now I focus very briefly on three who were in a category of their own.
Maya, this is a very early pew image, probably from the 7th century.
Her sister Gautami, and I'll explain that image shortly, Gautami was how she was known
to the Burmese, and it's her on the left.
And Mahdi, the santara's wife.
Unlike the women we have seen earlier, their biographical singularities informed their
visibility.
Being a future Buddha's mother was an unlikely fate, making Maya's depictions circumscribed.
By contrast, Gautami, famous for other accomplishments, in addition to being the Buddha Gautama's
foster mother, gained greater visibility over time.
Mahdi was important, always because of the santara.
Their visual persona was shaped by their roles as mothers, echoing the famous Pali
metaphor about the Buddha's compassion set to resemble a mother's love for her only son.
Now those of you who audited some of the earlier lectures in this course heard another interesting
interpretation of that simile.
Pagan saw the metaphor differently, and to explain its meaning, referenced Utarakuru.
As the images are damaged, I had a drawing made, and this is from the early 12th century.
Even Utarakuru babies born without mothers sucked their fingers for food.
When they died, an inscription added, there was no one to mourn for them.
Life in utopia, wishing trees and all, in the absence of mother love, was terribly sad.
As to how motherhood was determined before the discovery of DNA, Mahosata provided the
answer.
Siddhartha's birth ensured Maya's presence in every decor, an 11th century depiction,
even showing the fetus in her uterus as in the nidana to the jatakatha kata.
One Pagan steely showed Maya being prepared by the gods for what followed.
This is supposed to be early 12th century, but I think it's much later.
The baby's emergence from her hip here reflected, as I said, earlier Sanskrit Buddha biographies,
some of whose details remained intertwined with Pali's sources in the Burmese setting
and are later discarded.
The actual Pali narrative as we have it, called for a curtain partially shielding Maya and
many later 19th century depictions showed this.
When more was needed, the course featured Maya's marriage to Sudodana, the dream about
the white elephant and the baby's special food.
Maya's return to Kapilavastu with the prince and her sister was also popular.
This is from the 19th century.
But at least one painter insisted following the jatakatha kata nidana katha that Gautami
was absent from the scene and that Maya returned with the prince alone to Kapilavastu.
Maya's attendance at the reading of the prince's bodily signs was her last appearance in the
Burmese way of telling it that's her.
Gautami's initial absence as a person in her own right reflected the jatakatha katani
dana katha where she is unmentioned.
But visually she was actually everywhere because she was assumed to be present at Siddhartha's
birth in Lumbini.
And as this image shows at the examination of the baby's Marx episode, why she was featured
at these two events contrary to the Pali sources as we have them remains to be discovered.
The few Pagan Gautami recollections referenced her earlier life as a weaver's wife caring
for 500 piseka buddhas as the Burmese pronounced it or else in the Padumavati story.
Again, I don't have good images but the drawings are accurate.
The story appears in the Terigata commentary indicating its 12th century Pagan youth.
By the 18th century Gautami's role as a model of female discipleship was recognized as in
this image and also her role as the founder of the Bhikkhuni's order as was her donation
of a cloth to the Buddha which is what this image shows.
Once approximating like her sister Indic fertility figures, again like Maya she came to resemble
an idealized Burmese queen.
Whenever Sudodhana was shown with his son, Gautami was present as the queen in residence.
This is a picture of the plowing ceremony chapter and whenever Sudodhana was shown accompanying
by a queen that presumably had to be Gautami.
That's her here and this is where the baby at that point is sleeping under a tree.
Usually he is shown in a levitation position something the Venerable Bhikkhu and I were
discussing earlier.
The most fully rounded female depiction was undoubtedly Mahdi, Vasantara's wife.
If Amitatapa instantiated what wives should not be, Mahdi was the opposite.
The narrative, textual and visual made her Vasantara's indispensable helpmate.
And since here also the future of the universe was at stake, her role garnered the attention
it deserved.
But Mahdi too was a curious role model because husbands on the bodhisattva path were scarce.
Yet much about Mahdi had ordinary utility explaining her popularity.
Therefore one's family while handling a problematic husband provided useful lessons.
Few women were likely to have a husband bent on omniscience but many had difficult ones
and how Mahdi handled hers resonated.
A symbol of her resourcefulness and nurture was the basket always on hand.
Here you can see it more clearly.
Her many traumas showed how she came to terms with what life dished out.
As in this dramatic moment when she asks Vasantara where the children are and at first
he doesn't answer.
Buddhahood's high price was without parallel but acceptance of one's lot was encouraged.
This image shows it she first faints but then when she comes to she venerates him.
Mahdi showed how acceptance of one's lot needed to be lived.
And this brings us to the last part of my survey when changing circumstances, the encroachments
of the British and what has been called early modernity altered relationship networks, undermined
traditional institutions, scrambled male and female roles and also recast the Dhamma's
visual narratives including the presence of women in them.
This is an image showing the king of Ramavati reigning over the birthplace of the future
Buddha Deepankara and the image stresses all the women in his life in a very different
way from the much earlier 12th century image we saw at the beginning of my talk.
Those have detected a sense of individuality in the perfume chamber decors beginning in
the 18th century.
This impacted how people, women included, were imaged.
They became more identifiably human, less paradigmatic, revealing sometimes feisty
personas.
She clearly is not going to let the gatekeeper get away with anything.
A different sense of what life was about also encouraged more visible sensuality.
As in this Verinza Rainey retreat depiction, it's women positively oozing eroticism.
Feeling human emotions became more acceptable as in this elephant donation, the santara,
showing women weeping.
The Buddha's cremation, a subject treated more summarily in the earlier centuries,
was expanded greatly becoming a popular venue showing women's presence and response.
This is one sliver of it, there is much more.
Humor and secular concerns sometimes lighten the atmosphere.
Women's vanity was underscored by showing them with mirrors or else engaged in naughty
activities.
By contrast, the ever popular wives of the chief of the gods, of the god became pious
and like Indra, worshiped the Sulamani Stupa, that's them.
This guy whose face unfortunately was flaked is the Burmese Shin Malay, who is the equivalent
of the Thai Fra Malai, as some of you surely know.
He goes to the heavens where among other things he worships the Sulamani Stupa and
meets of all beings, the future Buddha, Mettaya.
In line with growing realism, all kinds of devotees were shown respecting the Buddha.
As in this 18th century series, including a woman, really astonishing, depicting ethnic
groups over whom Burmese kings claimed sovereignty.
They were all inscribed but unfortunately in these images the inscriptions have flaked
so we don't know which ethnic group she is supposed to represent.
These ever more inclusive decors also became more blatantly moralistic, depicting more
explicitly the system's sticks while somewhat slighting its carrots.
Behind this stood a more intrusive state apparatus in changing societal expectations.
What had once been left to custom and local mores became a concern for authorities, like
cockfighting that had a long history in the Burmese context but no one seemed to care
about its problematics until now.
These are 19th century images of what happened to people who engaged in cockfighting on earth.
When they get to hell, they turn into cocks themselves and are brutally hurting each
other, repeating what the cocks did on earth.
Adultery was always an issue but its punishments became more graphic, featuring hells in general
enabled showing punishments for now detailed transgressions, as in this instance of what
happened to pleaders who cheated their clients.
And the image comes from how certain Indian demons were depicted, they were said to have
a peculiarly sized testicles.
Why this punishment would be appropriate for a pleader who cheated his clients, I haven't
been able to find out.
Not only is he suffering because of how his body is now shaped, he's also skewered on
a pole and a bird is biting him.
And so now the conclusion.
For about eight centuries the Burmese believed that living well resembled navigating a labyrinth.
Help was needed to move around its corridors.
The earliest hint of this appears in a 12th century Mahosata visualization.
There were so many images in this talk I decided to spare you that one.
The one you are looking at comes from the 18th century and the concept by the 18th century
moved from the Mahosata to the Vesantara.
This image and all the others we saw today indicate how in the absence of more conventional
historical evidence, reading images embedded in the biography of the Buddha recovers for
us what has otherwise been lost, including how women were perceived in light of the Dhamma.
Thank you.
That's right.
I can't hear you, I only can read the text.
Thank you.
I'm not sure what happened but I will put up a PDF with all of the images for all of the students to download and look at.
Okay, now I can hear you well.
It's not a disaster.
It doesn't matter.
Anyway, if you want we can close at this point.
Thank you very much Venerable Biku and we will remain on email.