Translating Charismatic Bodies as Erotic Bodies: A Study of Revolutionary Agency and Counterrevolutionary Reception in Buddhist Legal Codes for Monastic Women * NICHOLAS WITKOWSKI (University of San Diego) Abstract: This piece, commemorating Paul Harrison’s many years of service to the discipline of Buddhist Studies, is a study of the nun Śuklā, as she is depicted in the Sanskrit and Chinese versions of the Mahāsāṃghika Bhikṣuṇī- vinaya. In this study, I first note that both traditions present Śuklā as a figure who is revolutionary in that she occupies a position of public authority. While the Sanskrit preserves this reading of Śuklā’s social position, I contend that the Chinese blunts the revolutionary force of the narrative by employing translation language which insinuates that women—including Śuklā—gain social prestige and public recognition only through the erotic arts. Finally, I draw upon a sixth-century record of early Buddhist nunneries in China to provide a possible historical explanation for this counterrevolutionary read- ing of the Indic Śuklā narrative by the Chinese translators. Keywords: Mahāsāṃghika Vinaya, Buddhist nunneries, Śuklā, Chinese trans- lations of Sanskrit This contribution is an attempt to work within a tradition of Buddhist Studies scholarship with which I believe Paul Harrison strongly identifies and which characterizes his role as a teacher: disarmingly modest scholarship that yields long-term transformations in how we think about Buddhism. Here, I refer specifically to Paul’s “Women in the Pure Land,” 1 modestly subtitled “Some Reflections on the Textual Sources.” I doubt that when Paul wrote this piece he believed that he was rewriting the intellectual history of women in Buddhism or advancing a specific feminist agenda. Indeed, Paul states that “this paper * This paper was originally conceived as part of a panel Amy Langenberg and I orga- nized for the annual AAR conference in 2022. I would like to thank Amy for her work in organizing the panel, and, more particularly, for her work in laying down the conceptual groundwork framing the paper I present to Paul Harrison on the occasion of this Festschrift. Thanks as well to my fellow panelists Annie Heckman, Manuel Lopez and Darcie Price-Wallace. 1 Harrison 1998.