- Lived:
- c. 6th–5th century BCE, entirely in and around Vaiśālī (near modern Vaishali, Bihar), capital of the Licchavi republic — her dates are pegged to the Buddha's, and his are argued over in chapter 23
- Field:
- poetry — and, before it, the strangest respectable profession in ancient India: appointed courtesan of a republic; in old age, Buddhist nun
- The Big Idea:
- The most honest poem about growing old in ancient literature was written by the woman with the most to lose by honesty — a professional beauty who catalogued her own body's ruin, feature by feature, and found the Buddha's teaching confirmed in the mirror.
- In their words:
- "My hair was as black as bees, graced with curly tips; now old, it has become like hemp bark — the word of the truthful one is confirmed." (Therīgāthā 13.1, in Bhikkhu Sujato's public-domain rendering)
- If you remember one thing:
- A courtesan out-bid the princes of her republic to feed the Buddha his last meal in her city, refused to sell the honour "for all Vaiśālī and its subject territory," gave away her mango grove — and then, as an old nun, wrote nineteen verses auditing her own decayed beauty with the calm of an inspector, which is the best evidence we have that the world's oldest anthology of women's poetry contains actual women.