Buddhamitra

Buddhamitrā (born c. 60) was a Buddhist nun from India during the Kushan Empire.

Accompanied at first by a monk named Pushyavuddhi, beginning in about 117, Buddhamitrā and Bala built monuments at Śrāvastī and at Sārnāth. They had the help of two of the region's satraps or governors, Vanaspara and Kharapallāna, the "great satrap". She is a remarkable figure because despite living in a patriarchal society she has left a mark in history where many male kings have been entirely forgotten.

Her niece, who was a nun named Dhanavati (or Dhanadevī ), in 148 built a memorial in honor of Buddhamitrā in the city of her birth. Shrava gives a translation of the inscription: quote|In the year 33 of mahārāja, devaputra Huvishka, in the 8th day of the 1st grīshma or summer [month], a Bodhisattva was set up at [Ma]dhravaṇaka or Mathurā by the nun Dhanavatī, the sister's daughter of the nun Buddhamitrā, who knows the Tripitaka, a female pupil of the monk Bala, who knows the Tripitaka, together with her mother and father ...... Just as other scholars have, Theo Damsteegt catalogs these inscriptions, in his case, in his 1978 doctoral dissertation, Epigraphical Hybrid Sanskrit, which identifies Buddhamitrā as a nun. Including all of the known works by and about Buddhamitrā, in 1993, Satya Shrava published a book of the inscriptions of the Kushan Empire rulers of India that have dates, along with a photograph of each one.