known as the Bhikkhunī-Saṃyutta "Linked Discourses of the Nuns". A number of the nuns whose verses are found in the Therigatha also have verses in the book of the Khuddaka Nikāya known as the Apadāna, often called the Biographical Stories in English. The Theri Apadāna contains verses from 40 Buddhist nuns recounting their past life deeds. Furthermore, there are also two extant Avadāna texts from the Mūla-Sarvāstivādin tradition: the Avadānasataka (surviving in Sanskrit, Tibetan and Chinese) and the Karmasataka (only survives in Tibetan). There is also a Pali language commentary on the Therigatha by the medieval Theravada monk Dhammapāla. A translation by William Pruitt (1998) has been published by the Pali Text Society as Commentary on the Verses of the Theris: Therigatha-atthakatha : Paramatthadipani VI. Furthermore, there is a Theravada commentary on the Aṅguttara Nikāya which provides detailed histories of the disciples of the Buddha, including their past lives and their deeds. A section of this text, the Etadagga-vagga commentary, provides extensive background to 13 outstanding nuns which are also named in the Therigatha. These biographies have been translated by Ānandajoti Bhikkhu. Modern works One modern study of the text is Kathryn R. Blackstone's Women in the Footsteps of the Buddha: Struggle for Liberation in the Therigatha (1998). Vijitha Rajapakse has written an analysis of the feminist, religious and philosophical themes of the Therigatha in The Therīgāthā A Revaluation (2000). Kyung Peggy Kim Meill has also written a study of the social background of the women in the text called Diversity in the Women of the Therīgāthā (2020). A recent collection of original poems inspired by the Therigatha by the poet Matty Weingast has peen published by Shambhala Publications as The First Free Women: Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns. It is described as a "contemporary and radical adaptation" in the book's back cover, and the author admits that they are "not literal translations". At least one reviewer has described it as a "translation", even though he expresses qualms about how much of the original is obscured by the adaptation of the poet. Another reviewer, Liz Wilson, describes the language as "fresh" and "bold". However, Wilson points out that while in some cases "he has produced a poem that follows the language of the original closely, in other cases, the poem is more of a trans-creation than a translation." Buddhist monks and nuns have also provided more serious critiques of