Women as patrons

In the previous chapter, we had argued that existing secondary literature has generally used archaeological data as a tool to corroborate frameworks derived from other sources. This chapter focusses on two primary sources. The first involves the donor records of the female Buddhist patrons, while the second are the literary texts, which were, in most cases, compiled by the monk editors. The first category of data refers to real women patrons who were almost invisible in the canonical records, while the second deals with women who were celebrated figures, made legendary by the Buddhist canonical authors. In this chapter, the focus is on inscriptions recording donations to religious centres as a basis for understanding gender relations in society, especially the role of women as patrons. It re-examines the data, taking gender as a crucial component for analysis to arrive at a conclusion on various social, religious, economic issues.