Bhikkhuni

Buddhist tradition holds that the Buddha initially declined, and only later agreed, to ordain women as bhikkhunis, fully ordained nuns, a founding narrative centered on his foster mother and aunt, Mahapajapati Gotami, who is recorded as petitioning repeatedly for ordination before the Buddha's attendant Ananda interceded on her behalf; the Buddha is described as agreeing on the condition that nuns accept eight additional rules, the garudhammas, subordinating the bhikkhuni order in certain respects to the bhikkhu order, a textual detail that has itself become a significant subject of modern scholarly and Buddhist feminist discussion regarding its authenticity and its implications for gender relations within the tradition. Once established, the bhikkhuni sangha flourished across early Buddhist India and subsequently spread, alongside the bhikkhu sangha, to Sri Lanka and other regions where Buddhism took root in the following centuries.

The Theravada bhikkhuni lineage specifically is understood to have died out, most likely by around the eleventh century CE, following invasions and political instability in Sri Lanka that disrupted the sustained quorum of ordained bhikkhunis required to ordain successors under Vinaya procedure, while the bhikkhuni lineage within Mahayana Buddhism, transmitted through China, Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam via a separate ordination transmission, continued unbroken and remains active today.

Beginning particularly in the late twentieth century, a modern movement to revive full bhikkhuni ordination within Theravada Buddhism gained momentum, most consequentially through ordinations performed in Sri Lanka from 1998 onward using bhikkhunis from the continuously unbroken Mahayana lineage, alongside Theravada bhikkhus, to satisfy the Vinaya's quorum requirements for a valid ordination, an approach its supporters argue is a legitimate cross-lineage restoration and its critics, including several national Theravada monastic authorities, argue cannot validly restore a lineage that Theravada Vinaya specifically requires to descend from Theravada ordination.

Thailand's Sangha Supreme Council has not formally recognized these revived ordinations, and Thai law has historically restricted the ordination of women as bhikkhunis within the country, while Sri Lanka has seen much broader acceptance, with several thousand ordained bhikkhunis now active there; Myanmar and other Theravada countries fall at various points along this same spectrum of official recognition and practical toleration. The dispute remains unresolved as a matter of institutional Theravada authority even as the number of ordained Theravada bhikkhunis worldwide, and their monasteries, teaching activity and lay following, has grown steadily since the revival began.