Zhu Jingjian (

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...

: 竺淨檢; 292–361) was a Chinese Buddhist nun, referred to as the first nun in China.Lily Xiao Hong Lee, Clara Lau, A.D. Stefanowska:
Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women: Antiquity Through Sui, 1600 B.C.E
' After having been widowed, she was active as a teacher in

Luoyang Luoyang is a city located in the confluence area of Luo River (Henan), Luo River and Yellow River in the west of Henan province. Governed as a prefecture-level city, it borders the provincial capital of Zhengzhou to the east, Pingdingshan to the ...

. She became interested in Buddhism, and was instructed in the subject by the monk Fashi. In this time there were monks, but no nuns, in China. However, she, and a couple of other women after her, became learned in Buddhism and started to live as de facto nuns. In 357 she made her vows and from that year onward, she was referred to as a nun and as such a pioneer. She has been called the first Buddhist nun in China. However, as she and the nuns that followed during the 4th century was never formally ordained in accordance to the ''vinaya'' ritual, they were formally known as novices rather than fully ordained nuns, and it was not until

Huiguo Huiguo () (746–805) was a bhikkhu, Buddhist monk of Tang dynasty, Tang China who studied and taught Chinese Esoteric Buddhism, a Vajrayana tradition recently imported from India. Later Huiguo would become the teacher of Kūkai, founder of Shingo ...

in the following century that nuns in China was formally recognized as such.

References

{{Reflist 292 births 361 deaths 4th-century Chinese women 4th-century Chinese people 4th-century Buddhist nuns