Ambapālī
A figure from the books
#Ambapali
Ambapālī · c. 6th–5th century BCE
In the books · 1 chapter
Who this is
Poetry — and, before it, the strangest respectable profession in ancient India: appointed courtesan of a republic; in old age, Buddhist nun.
“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.”
The big idea, in the book's words:
“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.”
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