urocentrum wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 2:15 pm
Are there any Buddhist texts which specifically address the wickedness of women?
Great question, urocentrum! You ask about an aspect of the Blessed One's Dhamma that is far too little preached in this wanton and feminized age.
I would say that it is in the Kunala Jātaka that we have the most comprehensive and insightful exposure of the wickedness of women. Here I will give just a few examples. Hopefully they will motivate you and others to read the Jātaka in its entirety.
Women's forty ways of enticing a man.
Verily, friend Punnamukha, in forty different ways a woman makes up to a man . She draws herself up, she bends down, she frisks about, she looks coy, she presses together her finger tips, she plants one foot on the other, she scratches the ground with a stick, she dances her boy up and down, she plays and makes the boy play, she kisses and makes him kiss her, she eats and gives him to eat, she either gives or begs something, whatever is done she mimics, she speaks in a high or low tone, she speaks now indistinctly, now distinctly, she appeals to him with dance, song and music, with tears or coquetry, or with her finery, she laughs or stares, she shakes her dress or shifts her loin-cloth, exposes or covers up her leg, exposes her bosom, her armpit, her navel, she closes her eye, she elevates her eyebrow, she pinches her lip, makes her tongue loll out, looses or tightens her cloth dress, looses or tightens her head-gear. Verily in these forty ways she makes up to a man.
Their wantonness
In ancient story Kanha, it is said,
A single maid to princes five was wed,
Insatiate still she lusted for yet more
And with a hump-backed dwarf she played the whore.
Their general wickedness illustrated with choice similes
Verily, friend Punnamukha, these creatures are not mere harlots, wenches or street-walkers, they are not so much strumpets as murderesses —I mean these harlots, wenches, and street-walkers . They are like unto robbers with braided locks, like a poisoned drink, like merchants that sing their own praises, crooked like a deer’s horn, evil-tongued like snakes, like a pit that is covered over, insatiate as hell, as hard to satisfy as a she-ogre, like the all-rapacious Yama, all-devouring like a flame, sweeping all before it as a river, like the wind going where it lists, undiscriminating like mount Neru, fruiting perennially like a poison tree.” Here too occurs a further verse:
Like poisoned draught or robber fell, crooked as horn of stag,
Like serpent evil-tongued are they, as merchant apt to brag,
Murderous as covered pit, like Hell’s insatiate maw are they,
As goblin greedy or like Death that carries all away.
Devouring like a flame are they, mighty as wind or flood,
Like Neru’s golden peak that aye confuses bad and good,
Pernicious as a poison-tree they fivefold ruin bring
On household gear, wasters of wealth and every precious thing.
Their extravagance and infidelity
Perverse in all her acts she does the thing she should eschew,
And hearkens to the stranger’s voice, her favours should he sue,
Her husband’s wealth is freely spent some other love to gain,
By signs like these her wickedness to all is rendered plain.
The wealth that by her lord with toil was carefully amassed,
The gear so painfully heaped up, behold, she squanders fast,
With neighbours far too intimate the lady soon will grow,
And by such signs the wickedness of women one may know.
Stepping abroad behold her how she walks about the streets,
And with the grossest disrespect her lord and master treats:
Nor of adultery stops short, corrupt in heart and mind—
By such like signs how wicked are all womenfolk we find.
Often she will at her own door all decency defy,
And shamelessly expose herself to any passing by,
The while with troubled heart she looks around on every side—
By such like signs the wickedness of women is descried.
As groves are made of wood, as streams in curves and windings flow,
So, give them opportunity, all women wrong will go.
Yea give them opportunity and secrecy withal,
And every single woman will from paths of virtue fall:
Thus will all women wantons prove, should time and place avail,
And e’en with humpback dwarf will sin, should other lovers fail.
Women that serve for man’s delight let every one distrust,
Fickle in heart they ever are and unrestrained in lust.
Ladies of pleasure fitly called, the basest of the base,
To all then such as common are as any bathing place.
Their mercenariness
Let him not trust because he thinks “she fancies me, I trow,”
Nor let him trust because her tears oft in his presence flow;
They court the man they hate as much as one that they adore,
Just as a ship that hugs alike the near and farther shore.
...
Women are not so formed, this man to love and that abhor,
They court the man they hate as much as one that they adore,
E’en as a ship that hugs alike the near and farther shore.
’Tis not a case of love or hate with womenfolk we see,
It is for gold they hug a man, like parasites a tree.
And many other vices intrinsic to females, too numerous to list here.
https://suttacentral.net/ja536/en/francis