Chen Baoxian

Background

Baoxian was born in 401. Her family hailed from the Chen Commandery in the valley of the Huai River in modern Henan Province.

Career

Baoxian became a nun in 420 at the age of nineteen and lived in the Jian’an Convent in the capital, where she mastered both meditation and the observance of the monastic rules. The Emperor Wen and his son, Emperor Xiaowu both donated food, clothing and money in her honor. Another son of Emperor Wen, Emperor Ming placed her in charge of Puxian Convent in 465 and then appointed her as rector general of the assembly of nuns of Jiankang in 466.

In 453, Faying, a well-known master of monastic rules who originally came from Dunhuang at the eastern end of the Silk Road, arrived in the Liu Song capital. In 474, Faying gave a lecture in Jinxing Monastery on the Sarvastivada Monastic Rules in Ten Recitations, and a group of nuns who attended his lecture consequently wished to receive for a second time the obligations to observe the monastic rules. Baoxia initially refused their request. Baoxian stipulated that the nuns who wanted to receive the monastic rules a second time had to be examined. The confessions were passed on to the office of the assembly which would then appoint someone to further investigate the nuns to see if they were suitable candidates in all other respects. Only then could the nuns receive the obligations a second time, thereby confirming their legitimate membership in the assembly of nuns. Any nun who opposed Baoxian’s plan was to be expelled from the assembly.

Baoxian’s firm leadership thus purged the assembly of nuns of the unorthodox practices that had crept in during the forty years after the initial ceremony of 433 when the Buddhist assembly of nuns had first received the obligations from both the assembly of monks and the assembly of nuns. No further incidents are recorded during her tenure in office and she died in 477 at the age of seventy-seven.

Achievements

• Baoxian was known as the first rector general of the assembly of nuns of Jiankang and as the first woman to fill that office over multiple convents in Chinese history.

Connections

Baoxian was not married and she had no children.

References

• Lives of the Nuns: Biographies of Chinese Buddhist Nuns from the Fourth to Sixth Centuries This book contains the biographies of 65 Chinese women who were Buddhist monks in early China. It is a great read for anyone interested in Buddhism or women in religion.
  1994
• Women in China: Current directions in historical scholarship
  1981
• Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women: Antiquity Through Sui, 1600 B.C.E. - 618 C.E This new volume of the "Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women" spans more than 2,000 years from antiquity to the early seventh century. It recovers the stories of more than 200 women, nearly all of them unknown in the West.
  1998