The Woman Who Raised the Buddha

The first full biography of Mahaprajapati Gautami, the woman who raised the Buddha--examining her life through stories and canonical records. The Woman Who Raised the Buddha tells the life story of the Buddha's adoptive mother, Mahaprajapati. She is the only mother he ever knew: his birth mother, Maya, died shortly after childbirth and her sister, Mahaprajapati, took the infant to her breast, nurturing and raising him into adulthood. While there is a lot of ambiguity overall in the Buddha's biography, this detail remains consistent across all Buddhist traditions and literature. Most present-day accounts are one-off stories or story fragments that focus on Mahaprajapati's life as a nun. The Woman Who Raised the Buddha looks at her entire life, with attention to her early years as a laywoman in her role as sister, queen, matriarch, and mother, as well as her later years as foremost nun and preceptor to the sangha of nuns. For the first time, her life is woven into a single narrative, drawing from story fragments and canonical records. The Sanskrit and Pali sources open windows into the past, revealing just how exceptional Mahaprajapati's role was in helping the Buddha establish an equal fourfold community of lay and monastic women and men. Mother to the Buddha, mother to early Buddhist women, mother to the Buddhist faith, Mahaprajapati's journey is finally presented as one interwoven with the founding of Buddhism.