women's intelligence

[Sara McClintock]

Regarding Edwin Byant's request:

One more example from a Buddhist author is found in Candrakiirti's
Madhyamakaavataarabhaa.sya ad 6.26. The relevant sentence reads as follows
(translated from the Tibetan, de la Vallee Poussin, p.105):

"The Tiirthikas, who wish to attain Suchness, desire to reach the most
excellent (state) without having definitively and correctly understood such
things as production and destruction, which are well known by the
uneducated, up to and including even cowherds and women." 

The interesting thing here is that unlike the Yamaari passage cited by John
Dunne, in which the women and zuudras are said to be persons "who lack
analytical judgment" (Tib., rnam par dpyod pa dang mi ldan pa),
Candrakiirti's texts mentions that women, cowherds and so on are
"uneducated" (Tib., ma byang ba = Skt. *avyutpanna). The use of this
locution implies at least some degree of awareness of the role of education
in developing "intelligence." 

Regarding the passage from J~naanagarbha cited by Jonathan Silk, it is
interesting to notice the combination of the two qualities (being female
and being a cowherd) into one, i.e., "female cowherds" (Tib. lang rdzi mo).
It is difficult to interpret this because one doesn't know what assumptions
the author brings to the two categories, and we don't have the original
Sanskrit. If I had the text at hand, I would check the reading in the
subcommentary attributed to Zaantarak.sita. [Perhaps someone else has
access to it?]

It seems possible that Indian authors were using two separate tropes: one
in which women and cowherds (or some other group) were seen as two separate
categories and one in which they singled out the women from within some
larger social category. An example of the first trope is found in the
Candrakiirti passage cited above. The translator, at any rate, clearly
understood the Sanskrit to indicate two separate groups (the translation
reads "gnag rdzi dang bud med"); this was probably a compound which the
translator interpreted as a dvandva.

An example extant in Sanskrit of the second trope (wife of a cowherd or
female cowherd) is found in the Tattvasa.mgrahapa~njikaa by Kamalaziila ad
v.3185 in the Dwarikidas Shastri edition, 3186 in the Krishnamacarya
edition). The context is a discussion of omniscience, but this time we are
reading a purvapak.sa attributed to the Miimaa.msakaas. The sentence reads:

katham abhaavapramaa.nagraastiik.rtamuurtter asatas tasya
pramaa.nabhuutenaagopaalaa:nganaadipratiitena vedena saamya.m bhavi.syati?

"How could there by any equality between that non-existent entity that has
been eclipsed by the instrumental means of cognition for non-existence
[abhaavaprama.na] and the authoritative Veda, which is well-known even by
the wives of cowherds and so on!"

The Tibetan translation, gnag rdzi'i chung ma'i bar, for aagopaalaa:nganaa
supports a tatpuru.sa interpretation of the compound. I have not located
the parallel passage in Kumaarila's writings (assuming that there is one).

As a woman scholar, such passages have understandably irked me whenever I
have encountered them, but until now I have not realized the ambiguity that
lies at their heart: do the authors intend "women" to represent those who
are ignorant, or do they specifically intend women of a particular class
(in which case the ignorance could be understood as due either to the lack
of education or to the inherent ignorance of the group). In either case, it
seems clear that if a cowherd is considered stupid, how much more so is his
wife or daughter.
____________________

Sara McClintock
Section de langues et civilisations orientales
Université de Lausanne
email: Sara.McClintock at orient.unil.ch