1. Standard of treatment of information

2. Origins
3. Clan
4. Becoming a monk
5. Age of becoming a monk
6. Becoming the Buddha's personal attendant
7. What role did Ānanda play as the Buddha's personal attendant?
8. Ānanda's most important achievements
9. Ānanda's gentleness to women
10. Ānanda's relations with the other bhikkhus
11. Ānanda's not attaining the arhat stage
12. Death

This article appeared in Volume 13 of the Proceedings of the Mori Seminar, The Study of Early Buddhism, issued by the Faculty of Letters, Toyo University, April 1, 2005. It was compiled at the end of the academic year 2004-2005 based on materials I had presented during the seminar I had held over the year on the theme "What kind of person was the Buddha's personal attendant, Ānanda?" and supplemented by opinions expressed by students in the course of the seminar series. Because ideas of the members of the seminar have been inserted without editing, because the source materials are not exhaustive and because of other inadequacies such as lack of sufficient scrutiny, I have entitled it a "draft."

Normally I would not consider making such a paper public. However, it has already appeared, although limited in circulation, in the Proceedings of the seminar, and since I have not at this time found anything in it that needs revision in the grand scheme of its conclusions, I have ventured to include it as a reference material in A Study of the Biography of Sakyamuni Based on the Early Buddhist Scriptural Sources and publish it on the Internet.
Please refer to the contents as they appear in the list at the head of this article.