One of the books of the Pali Tipitaka meaning " The Verses of the Nuns" and the earliest corpus of poetry by a woman from ancient India. The Therigatha consists of 250 poems made up of 552 verses altogether. All of them are written by nuns who were the Buddha's direct disciples and tell of their experiences in lay life, the reasons why they renounced the world, the joys of meditation and of their faith in the Buddha.

K.R. Norman, (trans.) The Verses of the Elders - Therigatha. Oxford, 1991;
S.E. Jootla, Inspiration from Enlightened Nuns. Kandy, 1988.