CHAPTER 1
BRITAIN
“It is a religion that Buddhism has come into contact with Western
thought, and this has been through the Pali tradition, the Buddhism of
Ceylon, Burma, Siam, and Cambodia.”
-E.J. Thomas
Biographical Sketches
Of all the countries in
the West, Britain has rendered the greatest service to Buddhism.
The name of Rhys Davids
heads the list of British scholars who dedicated their lives to Buddhist
studies. He came out to Ceylon in 1864 as a civil servant. In that year
Robert Childers, who had been in the Ceylon Civil Service for several
years, resigned and returned to England. These two events which occurred
in the same year were to have a far-reaching and lasting influence on
Pali Buddhist studies in the West. Both of them were drawn to the study
of Pali in Ceylon although in different circumstances, and both were
impressed by the Buddha’s teaching enshrined in the Pali canon.
On his return to
England, Childers compiled his famous Pali-English Dictionary
(1872-1875) in two volumes which he gave a great impetus to the study of
Pali. Besides his own independent studies in Pali Buddhism, he
collaborated with Hermann Oldenberg, the German scholar, and Viggo
Fausball, the Danish scholar, who were then in England. His death at a
comparatively early age was a grievous loss to Pali Buddhism.
Founding of the Pali Text Society
Rhys Davids himself
resigned from the Ceylon Civil Service and returned to England and
associated himself with the work of Chielders, Oldenberg, and Fausball,
besides engaging in his own Buddhist research. Of the many and varied
contributions he made, the greatest was the founding of the Pali Text
Society in 1881. The object of the Society, in his own words, was “to
render accessible to students the rich stores of the earliest Buddhist
literature now lying unedited and practically unused in the various
manuscripts scattered throughout the universities and public libraries
in Europe.”
He announced the birth
of the new Society when he gave his celebrated Hibbert Lectures in 1881.
in doing so, he declared: “The Sacred Books of the early Buddhists have
preserved to us the sole record of the only religious movement in the
world’s history which bears any close resemblance to Christianity; and
it is not too much to say that the publication of this unique literature
till be no less important for the study of history and especially of
religious history that the publication of the Vedas has already been.”
The West and the East
welcomed the new Society, and many distinguished scholars came forward
to help him in the noble cause. Rhys Davids’ missionary zeal for
Buddhist studies made him the staunchest champion in this sphere. He
helped the Society to publish almost the whole of the Pali canon and a
considerable number of commentaries and English translations, besides
himself editing and translating numerous texts. With love and devotion
he served the Society for forty one years.
A Monumental Work at 72
The Pali-English
Dictionary brought out by the Society stands as a monument to Rhys
Davids. He began to compile it at seventy-two, an age at which most
other men spend their time in retirement. He lived to see the
publication of the first three parts of this magnificent work. His
friend and collaborator William Stede, the philologist, completed it in
1925 – three years after his death.
Rhys Davids’ services to
Pali Buddhism were original and singular. In fact, his wife described
him as the “Max Muller of Buddhism.”
Mrs. Rhys Davids had not
merely been his companion for a quarter century, but was as capable and
dedicated a worker in the field of Pali scholarship as he was. A woman
of remarkable intellect and tireless energy, she edited and translated
some of the most abstruse texts, besides writing several
thought-provoking original books.
Miss I.B. Horner, the
present President of the Pali Text Society, and fourth in the line,
succeded Dr. William Stede. She is an internationally recognized Pali
scholar, and is worthily maintaining the Society’s traditions. She has
to her credit numerous editions of Pali texts, English translations, and
original works.
A German by birth, Max
Muller made a great contribution to Buddhism in England, where he spent
the greater part of his life. He was Editor-in-Chief of the Sacred Books
of the East Series which published a number of translations of Buddhists
texts. At the conclusion of the series, he took up the editorship of the
Sacred Books of the Buddhist Series under the auspices of the Pali Text
Society. He was a colossus in academic circles.
Another German, Hermann
Oldenberg edited and translated Pali texts in London, where he resided
for many years. Even before the Pali Text Society came into existence he
was engaged in Buddhist scholarship in England in collaboration with
Childers, Fausball, and Rhys Davids. His contribution to Buddhism was
outstanding.
First full Pali text in the West
Viggo Fausball, the
Danish scholar, was the first to publish a full of Pali text in the
West. His edition and Latin translation of the Dhammapada was brought
out in 1855. His edition of the Jataka is a monumental one.
Of the numerous Buddhist
scholars who have interpreted the Buddha’s teachings, Rhys Davids, by
common consent, stands pre-eminent. His considered views are to be found
in his articles in the “Encyclopaedia Brittanica”, in Hasting’s
“Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics”, in his Introduction to Dialogues
of the Buddha, and in the chapter on the Early History of the Buddhists,
Vol. 1 of the Cambridge History of India (1922). His six lectures under
the auspices of the Hibbert Trust, London, 1881, and his American
Lectures (printed under the title Buddhism, its History and Literature,
New York) contain penetrating interpretations of Buddhism.
Essentially a critic,
Caroline Rhys Davids, who was second only to her husband as a Buddhist
scholar, wrote with conviction, and every word of her writing bears the
stamp of her unique personality. Her most thought-provoking book is
Sakya or Buddhist Origins (1931).
Among the other
Buddhists scholars whose contribution to Buddhism is great were E.J.
Thomas of Cambridge, E.B. Cowell of Cambridge, and Berridale Keith of
Oxford. The History of Buddhist Thought by Thomas and Keith’s Buddhist
Philsophy in India and Ceylon are works of unquestionable merit. Cowell
was editor of the Jataka translations by various scholars.
Miss I.B. Horner and
Edward Conze rank very high indeed among modern scholars of Buddhism.
Miss Horner, who is President of the Pali Text Society, has to her
credit a formidable list of editions, translations, and original works.
Edward Conze, who has some thirty years experience as a lecturer in
psychology at university level, is a recognized scholar in Pali,
Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese. He is the author of several original
works, besides being the translator of numerous Pali, Sanskrit, Tibetan,
and Chinese works on Pali and Mahayana Buddhism. One of the most
outstanding works is Buddhist Thought in India.
Discovery of Dhammapada in Chinese
Three British scholars
of the past deserve special mention. F.L. Woodward, a brilliant
Cambridge classical scholar, not only edited and translated numerous
Pali texts but also spent sixteen years as head of a Buddhist school and
Ceylon. He never drew the salary attached to the post, and spent his
patrimony on erecting buildings for the school. A former pupil of
Woodward in England was E.M. Hare, who was engaged in business in Ceylon
for many years. In his leisure he edited and translated Pali texts. He
was not a university man, but was nevertheless an erudite Pali scholar.
Lord Chalmers completes the trio – a brilliant classical scholar of
Oxford and a former Colonial Governor of Ceylon. An eminent Pali scholar
and a pupil and friend of Rhys Davids, he had to his credit several
editions and translations of the Pali canon. All three of them gave
handsome donations to the Pali Text Society.
The Pali Text Society
has done a vast volume of work since its inception in 1881. The
magnitude of the work may be gauged from the list of its publications.
(See Appendix)
Although British
scholars have evidently concentrated on Pali Buddhism, they have not
altogether It was the Briton who discovered a Chinese version of the
Dhammapada. He was Samuel Beal, Professor of Chinese at University
College, London, in the 1870s. Among a large collection of books on the
Chinese Buddhist canon presented to the India Office, London, by the
Japanese Government about a hundred years ago, he came across a work
entitled Fa-kheu-King (The Sutra of the Law Verses) in which, he
discovered several similarities to the Pali version of the Dhammapada.
He published an English translation of it in 1878. his earlier work,
The Romantic Legend of Sakya Buddha, based on Chinese works, appeared in
1875.
The Light of Asia spreads far and wide
Buddhism became widely
known in the West by the publication of publication in 1879 of Sir Edwin
Arnold’s beautiful poem, The Light of Asia. It achieved a phenomenal
success. The sale of the book exceeded a million copies in Europe and
America, its circulation being wider that that of any other book on
Buddhism.
Rhys Davids founded the
Pali Text Society in London in 1881. It is the biggest contribution the
West has made to Buddhism. He enlisted the support and co-operation of
eminent scholars both of the West and the East for the work of the
Society, which he served with love and devotion for over forty years.
Upon his death in 1922, his wife succeeded him as President of the
Society and conducted its affairs as efficiently as her husband. The
next President of the Society was William Stede, the philologist, and
close collaborator and friend of Rhys Davids. The mantle of Rhys Davids
and Caroline Rhys Davids has now fallen on Miss I.B. Horner who had
known the Rhys Davids intimately from her girlhood. She continues the
great work with the utmost devotion and efficiency.
Of the several places of
Buddhist worship in Britain, the most popular is the London Buddhist
Vihara located at 5, Heathfield Gardens, London W 4. Here, headed by the
Ven. Dr. H. Saddhatissa Maha Thera, the pious and erudite Ceylon monk,
Buddhist monks from Ceylon, and occasionally some from Burma, minister
to the spiritual needs of Buddhists. The Buddhist Society in London is
an active body. Its President, Christmas Humphreys, who describes
himself as “a world Buddhist”, is the author of some dozen books on
Buddhist themes, including Zen, the Far Eastern interpretation of
Buddhism.
Buddhism studied and practised
In Germany, the study
and practice of Buddhism is done with proverbial thoroughness. The name
of Hermann Oldenberg stands out prominently as an early worker in the
field of Pali Buddhism. Karl Eugene Neumann, who regarded the old
commentators of Buddhism as “idiotic nitwits”, translated the bulk of
the Pali canon into German. Wilhelm Geiger made a name as the translator
of Mahavamsa and Culavamsa, besides his great contributions language and
literature. Paul Dahlke, George Grimm, Karl Seidenstucker, and Frederick
Zimmermann, were not only authors of Buddhist works but also led the
Buddhist way of life, propagating the Buddha’s teachings in their
fatherland.
Germany has centres in
principal cities and to wns for the study and practice of Buddhism.
Meditation is widely practised. The Buddhist temple in Berlin is
popular. So is the Altibuddhistische Gemeinde, the Old Buddhist
Community, in Utting am Ammersee in Upper Bavaria.
France concentrates on
Mahayana. The foremost worker in this field was Sylvain Levi, who
discovered and published rare Mahayana texts with their translations.
The French tradition is successfully continued today by a clever
pupillary succession. The Buddhist Society in Paris, which concentrated
on Pali Buddhism, has ceased to exist.
Belgium too concentrates
on the Mahayana. The great Belgian professor Louis de la Vallee Poussin
belonged to the French school of Sylvain Levi. His pupil Etienne Lamotte
is a brilliant translator of the Mahayana Sanskrit texts into French.
From Denmark – a Critical Pali Dictionary
A great centre of Pali
philology all along, Denmark has been engaged in compiling a Critical
Pali Dictionary since the end of the last century. The work initiated by
V. Trenckner is so colossal that it will take another eighteen years to
complete. So far only two volumes consisting of some eighteen fascicules
have been published. Danish authors have brought out some fifty books on
Buddhism, but the number of practising Buddhists in Denmark is small.
Leyden University in
Holland has for long been famous for Mahayana Buddhist studies. Hendrik
Kern, the dean of Dutch, orientalists, edited for the Harvard Oriental
Series Jatakamala, or the Garland of Birth Stories, a Sanskrit classic
in verse. It was rendered into English and published in London in 1895.
his most outstanding work was his Manuel of Indian Buddhism which came
out in 1896 in the Encyclopaedia of Buddhism. It is still consulted with
profit by students of Buddhism. The Dutch tradition initiated by him is
continued today by J.W. de Jong and others. There is an active Buddhist
organization in Holland, but the number of Buddhists, as in Denmark, is
small.
Sweden has a proud
record of Buddhist studies. The outstanding worker in this field was
Helmer Smith. He worked in Denmark and England as well. He made a
distinct contribution to Sinhalese Language and literature too.
Roman Catholic Italy has
made its contribution to Buddhist studies. Giuseppe Tucci’s work in this
field is truly remarkable. Besides his own researches for several
decades, he has published numerous Sanskrit and Tibetan Buddhists texts
and their translations. He is considered one of the greatest living
scholars of Buddhism. The stories of his eight expeditions to unexplored
regions of Tibet in search of rare manuscripts make interesting reading.
Russia’s monastery for lamas
A good deal of work has
been done in Russia to promote the scientific study of Buddhism by I.P.
Minaev. V.P. Vasiliev, E. Obermiller, S. Oldenburg, I.J. Schmidt, and
Th. Stcherbatsky. Oldenburg’s Bibliotheca Buddhica series was started in
1897. so far, more then thirty volumes have been published. The same
series brought out. Stcherbatsky’s monumental work, Buddhist Logic. A
Russian translation of the Dhammpada appeared in 1960.
Tsarist Russia was the
first country in the West to open a monastery for Buddhist lamas. It was
established in 1913 at Nova Derevaya, a suburb of St. Petersburg. In
1925, the Soviet Union founded the first University for Buddhists in
Europe near Moscow. A Buddhist temple existed in Poland during the last
years of the Russian Empire, and Buddhist soldiers of the Russian army
worshipped at it.
Popularisation of Buddhism in America
Founded through the
generosity of Henry Clarke Warren in 1891, the Harvard Oriental Series
has contributed much towards popularizing Buddhism in America. His
Buddhism in Translations (1896) was an outstanding work published by
the Series.
Warren worked under a
great handicap. As the result of a fall when he was a child, he was
badly deformed, but he carried on his university studies and those of
Pali Buddhism with dogged determination.
Unlike in most other
countries, there are Departments of Religions in many American
universities where Buddhism is a subject of study.
Of the places of
Buddhist worship in America, the Buddhist temple in Washington is the
best known. The Ven. Dickwelle Piyananda Thera, a Ceylon Buddhist monk,
is head of the mission there.
Apart from the work done
by scholars in the West itself, Western Buddhist monks have been
disseminating the Buddha Dhamma in Europe and America from Ceylon
through books, booklets and tracts printed in European languages. The
foremost of these monks was the Ven. Nyanatiloka Maha Thera. During his
54 year stay in Ceylon, he ordained as many as sixty Westerners as
monks. One of the pupils, the Ven. Nyanaponika Maha Thera, himself as
German, is head of the Forest Hermitage, Kandy, and looks after the work
of the Buddhist Publication Society which he founded. The Society has,
during the past decade, distributed a million copies of books and
booklets on different aspects of Buddhism in the West.
The impact of these
scholars on modern Western thought is evidenced today by the
introduction of Buddhism in the curricula of Western universities as
well as by the growing numbers seeking refuge in the Buddha Dhamma.
AUTHOR
CHAPTER II
BRITAIN
T.W.RHYS
DAVIDS
Buddhism has been
merely a field of research for the majority of Western scholars. To Rhys
Davids, however, it extended far beyond the academic to a living
religion and a meaningful way of life. This is borne out by his
declaration: “Buddhist or not Buddhist, I have examined every one of the
great religious systems of the world, and in none of them have I found
anything to surpass, in beauty and comprehensiveness, the Noble
Eight-fold Path of the Buddha. I am content to shape my life according
to that Path.”
Further testimony to
this fact is provided on a joint tribute paid to his memory by several
distinguished Western scholars of Buddhism in the Journal of the Pali
Text Society, London, for 1923: “The missionary spirit of early Buddhism
was, in fact, active in Rhys Davids,” it states. “He saw in the ancient
teachings of the Founder a noble moral force and a discreet intellectual
reserve in powerful combination, and he set himself with enthusiasm to
inspire respect for its deep sincerity and love of truth. His untiring
labour for its appreciation was rooted in the secret reverence of his
nature, and he prosecuted the work of the Society which owed its origin
to him with a persistence that never failed.”
Born at Colchester on 12
May, 1843, Thomas William Rhys Davids was the son of a well- known
Congregational Minister, the Rev. T.W. Davids, who had the “gift both of
patient enthusiasm and of illuminating what would be otherwise dry
details, both of which were outstanding characteristics of the son.”
After school years in Brighton, he refused a good opening to be a
solicitor, and entered the University of Breslau in Germany, where he
studied Sanskrit under Professor Stenzler and obtained the degree of
Ph.D. In 1864 he entered the Ceylon Civil Service. His philological
training made it quite easy for him to acquire a good working knowledge
of Sinhalese and Tamil.
The judge and the
unknown language
A curious incident drew
him to the study of Pali Buddhism. When he was functioning as a judge in
Ceylon, a case in connexion with a village Buddhist temple, involving
ecclesiastical law, came before him and a document in a language which
no one present in court could read was produced in evidence.
“I was once told, I do
not known with how much veracity,” writes Miss I.B. Horner, “ that this
document contained a quotation from the Vinaya Pitaka, and it was this
that aroused such a keen interest in Rhys Davids as to determine him to
master this apparently unknown language,”
The language was Pali,
and to assist him in its study he engaged the services of a Buddhist
monk named Yatramulle Unnanse, to whom he paid the following tribute in
his Hibbert Lectures: “when he fist came to me, the hand of death was
already upon him. He was sinking into the grave from the effects of a
painful and incurable malady. I had heard of his learning as a Pali
scholar, and of his illness, and was grateful to him for leaving his
home, under such circumstances, to teach a stranger. There was a strange
light in his sunken eyes, and he was constantly turning away from
questions of Pali to questions of Buddhism. I found him versed in all
the poetry and ethics of the Suttas, and was glad to hear him talk.
There was an indescribable attraction, a high-mindedness that filled me
with reverence.”
Rhys Davids made rapid progress under his
able tutor.
Contributions to R.A.S. Journal.
He resigned from the
Ceylon Civil Service in 1872 over a disagreement with a higher officer.
The disagreement arose when he suggested that government should provide
free pasture land for cattle. The higher officer was against this
suggestion, and the government of the day held with him. Returning to
England, he studied law and was called to the Bar from middle Tempe in
1877. But his practice was poor. He concentrated on the interpretation
of Buddhism, and his contributions to the Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society on the “ Inscriptions of Parakrama Bahu,” “Sigiri, the Lion
Rock,” and “Two Old Sinhalese of earlier scholars such as George Turnour,
Gogerly, Spence Hardy, Childers, Fausball, Oldenberg and others. This
was incorporated in the Presidential address to the Philological Society
by Dr. Richard Morris in 1875. “It was a fine example of the breath of
his outlook and the thoroughness of his work.”
“There was Pali scholars
here and there, but it was reserved for Rhys Davids to bring some kind
of organization in Pali studies in the West, to pave the way for
Buddhism to become a household word, and to show its value as part of
special knowledge and its mental or religious significance to mankind as
a whole.”
Rhys Davids read widely
on the history of Buddhism and gained greater mastery of Pali. This he
did despite attacks of malaria which he had contracted in the Jungles of
Ceylon. He has collected and brought from Ceylon all the necessary
material for an edition of the Dipavansa. But one day Oldenberg,then
working in the India Office, London, on his Vinaya Pitaka, called on him
to consult him on editing the Dipavansa. To Oldenberg’s amazement and
delight, Rhys Davids, with characteristic generosity, gave him all his
material. Oldenberg could hardly express his thanks for his emotion.
Nibbana does not mean annihilation
The first
book was by Rhys Davids was The Ancient Coins and Measures of Ceylon
which appeared in 1877. The next year his Manual of Buddhism was
published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge in its
non-Christian Religions Series. The 23rd edition of this work appeared
in 1914. Nibbana, he wrote, does not mean annihilation as was so often
believed, but signifies a moral and mental condition attainable in one’s
present life itself. Two years later this conclusion was justified by
Dr. Frankfurter’s publication of the three passages from the Sanyutta
Nikaya in which Nibbana was defined as the extinction of the threefold
fire of greed, hatred and delusion.
By now Rhys Davids had
won a high reputation which brought him into correspondence with an
increasing number of scholars. His opportunities for interpreting
Buddhism multiplied.
He translated the Jataka
Nidanakatha with an important introduction on the history of Birth-story
literature and published it in 1880 under the title of Buddhist
Birth-stories or Jataka Tales. “It may be regarded as the preamble to
the translation of Fausball’s Jataka, issued under the editorship of
Professor E.B. Cowell in six volumes (Cambridge University Press,
1895-1907),” states Miss I.B. Horner.
The next year he made
his first contribution to the Sacred Books of the Buddhist Series edited
by Professor Max Muller, namely Buddhist Suttas, translated from the
Pali. In 1881-1885, there were published in the same series three
volumes entitled Vinaya Texts which he had translated from the Pali in
collaboration with the Hermann Oldenberg. These works were followed in
1890 and 1894, by the Questions of King Milinda (Sacred Books of the
East Vols. 35 and 36, reprinted in the U.S.A in 1965). In his
estimation, the text of Milindapanho (The Questions of King Milinda) is
“the masterpiece of Indian prose.” Miss Horner says that “his two
introductions, one to each volume, are immensely valuable and may be
read with great profit even today.”
Hibbert lectures : the new outlook
His famous
six lectures under the Hibbert Trust in 1881 enabled him to emphasize
some of the results he had gained and written about in his Manual of
Buddhism three years before. In a “strain of stately eloquence he
described the new outlook to which research and reflection had brought
him.”
“It is not
too much to say”, he declared, “that a new world has been once more
discovered by the adventurers as persevering as Columbus, and perhaps at
present have received as little gratitude as he did from his
contemporaries; and that the inhabitants of the Old World cannot, if
they would, go back to the quiet times when the New World was not,
because it was unknown. Everyone to whom the entrancing story of man’s
gradual rise and progress has charms peculiarly its own will welcome the
new light; others will have to face the new facts, and find room for
them in their conceptions of the world’s history that history which is
the epic of humanity. Happy are we if the strains of that epic are
ringing in our ears, if the spirit of that epic is ever ruling in our
hearts. As abiding sense of the long past, whose beginnings are beyond
imagination, and of the long past, whose end we cannot realize, may fill
us indeed with a knowledge of our own insignificance—the bubbles on the
stream which flash into light for a moment and are seen no more. But it
will, perhaps, bring us nearer to a sense of the infinite than man in
his clearest moments, in his deepest moods, can ever otherwise hope to
reach. It will enable us to appreciate what is meant by the solidarity
of man, and will fill us with an overpowering awe and wonder at the
immensity of that series of which we are but a few of the tiny links.
And the knowledge of what man has been in distant times, in far off
lands, under the influence of ideas which at first sight seem to us so
strange, will strengthen within us that reverence, sympathy and love
which must follow on a realization of the mysterious complexity of
being, past, present, and to come, that is wrapt up in every human
life.”
Formation of the Pali Text Society
In the
second of these lectures Rhys Davids announced the formation of the Pali
Text Society. Eminent scholars of both the East and the West had
welcomed the new Society, and its first committee contained the names of
Viggo Fausball, Hermann Oldenberg, Emile Senart, and Richard Morris,
with Rhys Davids as chairman. Offers of financial assistance from
individuals, leading orientalists, universities and other institutions
had been received. Pali scholars of various nationalities had offered
their free services to edit and translate the texts. Rhys Davids
described the important of these texts as follows:
“The historical
importance of these texts can scarcely be exaggerated, either in respect
of their value for the history of folk-lore, or of religion, or of
language. It is already certain that they were all put into their
present form within a very limited period, probably extending to less
than a century and a half (about 400-250 B.C). For that period they have
preserved for us, quite uncontaminated by an outside influence, or of
the everyday beliefs and customs of a people nearly related to ourselves
just as they were passing through the first stages of civilization. They
are our best authorities for the early history of that interesting
system of religion so nearly allied to some of the latest speculations
among ourselves, and which has influenced so powerfully and for so long
a time so great a portion of the human race—the system of religion which
we now call Buddhism. And in a history of speech they contain
unimpeachable evidence of a stage in language midway between Vedic
Sanskrit and the modern forms of speech in India.”
Royal patronage for Sacred Books
The conduct of the Pali
Text Society devolved almost entirely upon Rhys Davids until his
marriage in 1894 to Caroline Augusta Foley which brought him a most
accomplished and devoted helper. In the words of Miss I.B. Horner, Mrs
Rhys Davids’ “largeness of the heart and brain, disciplined intellect
and unbounded energy made her a fit partner in so full a life”. There
were three children of the marriage, two daughters and a son. The
latter, a brilliant product of Eton, distinguished himself in the armed
forces during World War I. Most regrettably he was killed in action in
1917. This was a grievous loss to the parents.
Rhys Davids possessed a
good business head and knew the art of influencing people. He was thus
able to enlist considerable support for his cause. He collected funds,
managed the finances of the Society, made arrangements with printers and
supervised publications.
The first two volumes of
the Sacred Books of the Buddhists Series were published in 1895 and 1899
under the patronage of King Chulalankara of Siam, and the third and
fourth volumes had the royal patronage of his successor.
Rhys Davids’ most
cherished ambition was to provide a new Pali-English Dictionary and to
the end he obtained promises of support from scholars in other lands.
Many of these, however, did not materialise. So he shouldered the great
task singlehanded at the age of seventy-two. Fortunately, however, after
a few years, he was able to secure assistance in the full-time services
of Dr. William Stede, the philogist.
He collected from
several sources 2160 pounds, which included a donation of 500 pounds
from King Chulalankara of Siam. With this money the Society was able to
issue the first volume of the Dictionary in 1921. In his Foreword he
wrote: “The work is essentially preliminary…to wait for perfection would
postpone the much-needed Dictionary to the Greek Kalends. It has
therefore been decided to proceed as rapidly as possible with the
completion of this first edition, and to reserve the proceeds of the
sale for the eventual issue of a second edition which shall come nearer
to our ideals of what a Pali Dictionary should be.” Miss Horner states
that “although the eventual second edition is still only a distant
vision, the original edition remains an invaluable tool and has been
reprinted several times.”
Lectures at Cornell University
Rhys Davids became
Professor of Pali in University College, London, in 1882. He gave new
life to the Royal Asiatic Society as its secretary and librarian
(1885-1904), and was a founder of both the British Academy and the
London School of Oriental and African Studies.
In 1884 he edited
Anuruddha Thera’s Abhidhammatthasarogaha which was published in the Pali
Text Society Journal, and in 1886 there appeared the first volume of the
Sumangala VIlasini which he edited in collaboration with his friend,
Professor J.E Carpenter. They also edited in 1890 and in 1911 the Digha
Nikaya, Vols I and II.
Professor and Mrs Rhys
Davids went to America in 1894 where he gave a series of lectures at
Cornell University. There were published in New York in 1896 under the
title of Buddhism: Its History and Literature.
Rhys Davids could not
visit India on his way back to England from Ceylon, or while he was in
Ceylon. His desire to see the sights of the Buddhist story was naturally
very strong, and opportunity was at least found. In 1899-1900 he visited
Buddha Gaya and other localities connected with the life of the Buddha.
One of the results of this journey was a remarkable work entitled
Buddhist India (1903). The 8th edition was published in 1959—a pioneer
work surveying the social and political conditions in which Buddhism
arose. The other outcome of his visit to India was the Indian Text
Series, the purpose of which was to furnish full and accurate material
for the study of the history of India. This Series came into existence
with difficulty despite the approval and active interest of Lord Curzon,
the then Viceroy of India.
Rhys Davids was
appointed Professor of Comparative Religion in the Victoria University,
Manchester, in 1904, the first University post created in England for
that purpose. As a token of their gratitude a presentation was made to
him by the Royal Asiatic Society. He inspired his students with his own
ardour. He found his reward in a pupil’s response to his teachings; he
delighted in their advance, and was never happier than in helping them
through their difficulties.
Dialogues of the Buddha
With the collaboration
of his wife he completed in 1910 and 1921 the translation of the Digha
Nikaya called Dialogues of the Buddha. This was published in the Sacred
Books of the Buddhist Series, of which he had translated the first
volume in 1899. “As an Orientalist and as a writer of clear, stately and
vigorous English,” states Miss Horner, “he reached a high level in his
illumination introductions to the various Dialogues of which the Digha
is composed. Some of his ripest scholarship is also to be found
scattered in many an article in Rashdall Hasting’s ‘Encyclopaedia of
Religion and Ethnics’, the majority of them not yet superseded in the
breath of their outlook and firm grasp of the subject.”
The newly-formed India
Society (now the Royal India, Pakistan and Ceylon Society) made him its
President in 1910. He found it tiresome to travel from Manchester to
attend meetings of the Society and those of the British Academy. So he
left Manchester and settled down in Chipstead, Surrey. “Here he lived a
quiet scholar’s life, often suffering much pain, but working through it
and not, till near the end, giving up the golf and other games, outdoor
and indoor, which had been his refreshment for so long,” says Miss
Horner.
Rhys Davids was a Fellow
of the Royal Academy, M.A., Ph.D., D.Sc., D. Litt and LL.D, besides
being a member of several learned societies.
He died on 27 December,
1922.
In a tribute to his
memory, Miss Horner states: “Rhys Davids bore the stamp of complete
integrity of thought and character. His very great erudition never sat
heavily on him. In conversation he was learned, brilliant, and of
entrancing interest; but yet people who knew him remember well how the
humour that constantly came babbling out of him, enlivening everything,
made his deep wisdom palatable even to the most ordinary or ignorant of
persons and led them to feel they were making some contribution that was
worth-while.”
Dr. Stede’s striking tribute
His collaborator for a
long period, Dr. William Stede, in a striking tribute to his memory,
states: “What Rhys Davids has been to me nobody but he and I knew. What
I thought of him he must have felt when I confided my troubles to him
sitting by his side. What he was to me I realized each time I looked
into his clear eyes and felt the touch of his hand. Kindness, sympathy,
gentleness—in one word metta, on which he loved to quote the Iti-vuttaka—was
the prominent trait of his character. I have his picture in my mind, and
I shall always remember him as my kalyanamitta.”
Among the other tributes
paid to Rhys Davids were:
Professor Moritz
Winternitz of Prague University: “No man living, and scarcely one single
man in the past, has contributed so much to the knowledge of Buddhism
and Buddhist literature as he. His name will always be remembered as
that of a most enthusiastic and devoted scholar, but those who had the
good fortune to know him personally will always cherish in his memory as
that of a kind and lovable man, of a Buddhist in the real sense of the
word.”
Professor C.R. Lanman of
Harvard University: “I must say how much we owe to his courageous
persistence, through all these man, many years of sunshine and of storm,
in devoting himself to a work the greatness of which is now obvious, and
the importance and value of which he had the vision to see long before
the other scholars woke to it—or at any rate, before they, awaking,
could transmute their vision into action.”
The Anagarika Dharmapala
of Ceylon: “When will England give birth to a man like Rhys Davids? He
gave life to those indifferent to religion. By publication of Pali texts
in Roman characters, he brought the Buddhavacana within the reach of the
poor scholar. His name will never be forgotten by the Pali Student.”
Devotion to Truth and Learning
Professor S. Tachibana
of Japan: “He devoted the greater part of his life to promote the
knowledge of Buddhism in the West, and all know how much he has done
therein. His contribution to it is greater than that of any other
scholar.”
Professor P. Maung Tin
of Burma: “To me the works of Professor Rhys Davids have been a source
of joy and inspiration. His name is held, and will continue to be held,
in greater respect and admiration than that of any other scholar.”
Dr. K.N. Sitaram of
India: “He has done more than any other scholar to spread the knowledge
of the religion and teachings of one of the greatest sons of Mother
India.”
Dr. W.A. de Silva of
Ceylon: “His was not mere scholarship, eminent as it was; his was the
opportunity, and he took it to expound to the world the Dhamma of the
Great Master. And we in Ceylon had in him one who not only loved the
Island and the Sinhalese, but one who was able to place before the world
the best we have acquired in our history.”
Dr. Arnold C. Taylor:
“His was the ideal scholar’s life, devoted to truth and learning for
their own sake, with an enthusiasm rare in this country. He had left a
splendid movement behind in the long row of texts and translations,
which would never have come into being but for him, and so many of which
are his own work, I never met anyone whose enthusiasm for his work was
so inspiring and infectious.”
Sir E. Denison Ross:
“More than anyone else he encouraged me in the Path of Orientalism. No
other scholar I have known combined the seriousness of study with the
human side of everyday life to the same extent. He carried out a great
life’s work and leaves an undying name, but what I shall always remember
best about him are the warm greeting, the cherry smile, and the constant
charm that compelled affection.”
Sir Israel Gollancz:
“Undaunted, he pursued the tasks he had set himself, and by those
labours and by his personality he will live in the hearts of men. He
served learning well.
MRS.
C.A.F.RHYS DAVIDS
The governing fact about
Mrs. Rhys Davids is that she was a critic. She would not accept as the
Buddha-word all that is in the Pali canon. She believed that the monks
who inherited the Buddha’s teaching handed in a “defective and mutilated
form’.’ She had her own interpretations of the essentially tolerant and
progressive spirit of Buddhism, and gave the best of her scholarship to
the Buddhist cause.
At the age of 36, Miss
Caroline Augusta Foley married the 52-year-old Thomas William Rhys
Davids. She was mature and independent with a brilliant academic
background. So was Rhys Davids. A common interest in Pali existed
between them. A mutual friend, who foresaw the potentialities of a union
between two great intellectuals, encouraged them to marry. The marriage
proved a perfect one.
Born in 1858, Caroline
Augusta Foley had a brilliant career at University College, London, of
which she was later elected a Fellow. An M.A., D. Litt, she was for a
long period Reader in Pali at the London School of Oriental and African
Studies, and was also for a long time Lecturer in Indian Philosophy at
Manchester University.
Versatile, gifted, a scholar in the front rank.
“Dr. Caroline Rhys
Davids, who survived her husband, is one of the most versatile and
gifted women I have known,” records Sir Denison Ross, the first Director
of the London School of Oriental and African Studies, in his
autobiography entitled Both Ends of the Candle. “Able, as a young woman,
to beat most others at tennis and billiards, she has for years been a
Pali scholar in the front rank. As Reader in Pali she was one of the
ornaments of the school, attracting students from many countries. She
suffered a terrible bereavement in the loss of her brilliant son, one of
our flying aces and a V.C.”
Her editions of the Pali
texts, their English translations—both in prose and verse—introductions
to her own works and those of other scholars, and her original works add
up to a formidable number.
Credit for bringing to
light the abstruse Abhidharma Pitaka goes to her. She has edited with
remarkable skill such difficult texts as the Vibhanga the Patthana. the
Yamaka, and the Visuddhimagga. She also rendered into lucid English
profound Avhidharma works as the Dhammasangani (Manual of Psychological
Ethics), the Abidhammatthasangaha (Compendium of Philosophy), and the
Kathavatthu (Points of Controversy), the last two in collaboration with
Swee Zan Aung of Burma.
Mrs. Rhys Davids
rendered into English verse the Theragatha and Therigatha under the
titles of Psalms of the Brethren and Psalms of the Sisters. They are
considered masterpieces of lyrical beauty.
Besides these and other
editions and translations, she has written original works such as Gotama
the Man and the thought provoking Sakya or Buddhist Origins. Her
articles on various Buddhist themes have published posthumously under
the title of Wayfarer’s Words.
Interpretation of the doctrine
One of her own
interpretations of the doctrine runs as follows: “It is recorded in the
Pali scriptures at least three times that the chief comrade of Gotama
Buddha, Saruputta, used to speak of ‘You and your mind’ in a parable. He
would say, it is recorded, you should have your mind, or thoughts (citta)
under your control; you should not be under the control of the mind or
thoughts. Just as a Raja, with many suits in his wardrobe, would be pick
out he wanted for morning wear, another for mid-day wear, another for
evening wear, putting on a suitable suit (the pun is mine), the suit
having nothing to say in the matter. (You will find these passages in
Majjhiman Nikaya, Sutta 32, Sanyutta Nikaya, Mahavagga on Bojjhangas,
Patisambhida-magga, Bojjhanga-katha).
“Here is a very clear
distinction made between the man and his ‘kit’, his equipment, tools or
instruments. The latter are to be kept in their place. You see the
distinction made again in another parable, this time told of the Master:
Men are in Jeta Wood about the Vihara (where he spent his last years)
collecting faggots. And he: ‘You would not call these faggots the Wood?
So look on the body and mind as not of you, not the very you’. The
faggots are carried away for burning: the Wood stands and blossoms
again.
“Once more, in the first
two verses of the Twins(Yamaka) chapter of the Dhammapada, you read: ‘If
with corrupted mind he speaks or acts, ill follows him as the wheel the
foot of drawing beast; if with mind serene he speaks or acts, bliss
follows him as shadows goes not from the tree.’ Here again, mind is the
instrument ‘with’ which man acts.
“But in time a change
came over the teaching. Master and comrade had passed away: other
teachers arose who were, as all Indian teaching, greatly influenced by
the new mind-study that had been gaining ground, and which came to be
known as Sankhya: Pali, sankha, sankhana. Man’s mind was, in it, being
analysed, as if it were an unseen body, or group of processes of an
orderly kind, like those of the body. It was a beginning of what we in
our day have come to do also and to call psychology. And gradually it
affected the Buddhist Sasana much as it has affected our own teaching:
the ‘man’ came to be resolved into his thoughts or mind. Just as in a
modern book I read the words ‘the self or mind’, so did Buddhist
teachers come to use the mind or thought for the self or man. Thus we
read in a Sutta (M-n. 43): that it is the mind (mano) who enjoys
collectively all the sense-impressions, not you, not the man, not the
self as the earlier teaching would have said. Only the Commentary
retains the older way: ‘as a Raja owning five villages would enjoy the
revenue they paid’.
A way but no Wayfarer
“Turn too to your
dhammapada: in those two twin verses, each of a couplet like rest of
the Twins, there has been added, or rather prefaced a line in each, to
show the new importance assigned to the mind: ‘ Things are forerun by
mind, have mind as best, are compounds of the mind.’ You can see that if
you take away this line the meaning of the couplets is just as good, and
the symmetry of the twins is better.
“For in them is
clear that it is not mind which is the speaker or doer; in them the
clothes are not made the man, nor the faggots the wood. But in the
interpolated line it is just this that happened. This seems the long way
from the founder’s first advice to laymen: ‘to seek the self’, the man.
But we are all of us just now, in East and West, in bondage to this
thrusting of man’s ways or minding into place of the man ‘who minds’. I
see it constantly in Europeans writing and speaking; I see it in
Buddhist writing. So much so, that the master’s central figure of the
Way is spoken as if there were no wayfarer, but only ideas about his
faring. Truly is the medieval monks’ teaching carried out, that ’a Way
is there, but no wayfarer!’ Yet what meaning has a way without the
wayfarer? Is he only there for the sake of the Way, or is the way there
for the sake? A road made for nobody to travel on his futile. Let us get
back to the better teaching of the wardrobe and the wood. Let us be the
master of the suits; let us dispose of our faggots. The shall we, as the
wood in springtime break out into new and finer blossom, in that we
have not wronged the great New Word taught by Sariputta and his beloved
Friend.”
The Buddhist in Thervada
countries do not accept this interpretation, but cling on to
Buddhaghosa’s view that the Way is there for “mere phenomena” to roll
on.
Progressive Spirit of Buddhism
Mrs. Rhys Davids
stresses the essentially tolerant and progressive spirit of Buddhism
thus:
“Here is a doctrine that
takes us back as far as the days of the very beginnings of Hellenic
Science. For this doctrine it is claimed that it might have served not
to check or to ignore the discoveries of Copernicus and Bruno, Galileo
and Newton, Darwin and Spenser but to stimulate and inspire them. Not a
guide that they might have adhered to from convention only, or appealed
to now and again to reconcile the lay world with their discoveries and
conclusions but an oracle that would have spurred them on in their quest
for Truth….
“Well, it is one thing
to talk about achievements of modern science and advance of modern
thought, and another thing to claim for this age in general that it is
imbued with the scientific spirit , or that the views and conduct of the
average man or woman are governed thereby. This state of things is but
in its infancy. But it is born, and is growing. Hence any movement of
thought will have, more and more, to cope with the scientific spirit,
and will stand or fall largely by its sanction. And hence all who call
themselves Buddhist doctrine should or, at least, the spirit of that
doctrine, should look into this claim that is made for it. Those, again,
whose interest lies in tracing the growth of human ideas, can in no wise
feel indifferent to the real extent to which the ancient mind of India
anticipated a standpoint slowly and painfully won to by the intellect of
Europe…
Suggestion of a psychological crisis
“The fact that early
Buddhism and modern Sciene express belief in a universal law of
Causation in terms so similar, leads inevitably to the further inquiry,
as to how far there is historical evidence that the evolution of this
belief among early Buddhists was parallel to the corresponding evolution
in Europe. The lack of continuity and of chronological certainty in the
literatures of ancient India hinders and complicates such an inquiry.
But there does survive a body of Brahmanical literature, an accretion of
various dates, known as the Sixty Upanisads of the Veda, in which form
of Pantheism called Atmanism or Vedantism is set forth, with mainly
archaic views on what we term First, Final and Occasional Cause. And we
have the Pali canon of the Buddhists, coinciding, it is thought, in
date, with the middle period of these sixty books, and repudiating this
Atmanism, whether macrocosmically or microcosmically conceived.
“To what extent
Buddhism, as a lay, anti-Brahmanic, anti-sacerdotal movement, originated
the rejection of Atmanism, or carried on a wider and older tradtion of
rejection, it is not possible to say. But the fact that the founders of
Buddhism did, in leaving the world for the religious life, take up this
Protestant position on the one hand, and on the other make a law of
natural causation their chief doctrine, suggests at all events a
profound psychological crisis.”
In these passages we see
Mrs. Rhys Davids at the height of her powers, when she was giving the
best of her scholarship to the Buddhist cause.
FRIEDRICH
MAX MULLER
By birth a German,
Friedrich Max Muller made a great contribution to Buddhism from England
where he spent the greater part of his life. “He might be taken as a
typical Englishman, for he has qualities which commend his writings to
the educated John Bull.” He was a British subject.
He edited the Sacred
Books of the East Series which consisted of fifty volumes of English
translations by twenty outstanding scholars, including a translation of
the Dhammapada by himself. Upon the closure of this series, he took up
the editorship of the Sacred Books of the Buddhists Series under the
auspices of the Pali Text Society. On his death in 1900, Rhys Davids
took up the editorship of the series and twenty-five translations of the
series were published.
Besides editing these
two series, Max Muller has to his credit numerous essays and articles on
various Buddhist topics.
Nihilistic View refuted
He was one of the
earliest Western scholars to refute the view that Buddhism is nihilism.
Among those who held this view was his own teacher, Eugene Burnouf, the
French orientalist. “If we may argue from human nature, such as we find
it at all times and in all countries, we confess that we cannot bring
ourselves to believe that the reformer of India, the teacher of so
perfect a code of morality, the young prince who gave up all he had in
order to help those whom he saw afflicted in mind, body, estate, should
have cared about speculation which he knew would either be
misunderstood, or not understood at all, by those whom he wished to
benefit; that he should have thrown away one of the most powerful
weapons in the hands of every religious teacher, a belief in a future
life, and should not have seen that, this life was sooner or later to
end in nothing, it was hardly worth the trouble which he took himself,
or the sacrifices which he imposed on his disciples,” he wrote.
Born on 6 December,
1823, in the Duchy of Anhalt-Dessau, Max Muller was the son of Wilhelm
Muller, a famous poet of his day. A classical philologist at the age of
28, Wilhelm functioned as headmaster of a grammar school. Later he
became director of the ducal library of his home town.
Poets, artists, literati
and musicians sought his company and that of his cultured and talented
wife, and often visited his home. He named his son Friederich after
Friederich Leopold, Duke of Anhalt-Dessau, a friend of the family.
Doctorate in Philology at 20
The Muller family was a
happy one, but the happiness was shortlived, for in 1827, at the age of
33, Wilhelm died, leaving his young wife, his daughter , aged 8, and
Max, aged 4, in strained circumstances. But there were friends to help
them. Dr. Carus, a friend of Wilhelm, took Max to his home in Leipzig
and sent him to school there.
The home of Dr. Carus,
too, was a meeting place of poets, artists, literati and musicians. They
found that Max was a boy of many gifts. He had a leaning for music as
well, but Felix Mendelssohn advised him not to follow a musical career.
He then decided on the study of philology.
Regarded as a prodigy,
Max entered the university of Leipzig at the age of 17, and obtained his
doctorate in philology at 20, 1843. As a youth came into contact with
such intellectual giants as Lotze, Georg Forsters, Herder and Goethe,
who praised Indian poetry and antiquity. They impressed him. He
discussed deep problems of Indian thought with Schopenhauer. His first
literary effort, a translation of the Hitopadesa, the Sanskrit classic,
into German, was published in 1844.
He next went to Berlin,
where Franz Bopp introduced him to the science of Indogermanistice which
he had evolved. Frederich Ruckert allowed Max to take part in his
literary activities and taught him the art of translation. He was
attracted by the lectures of Schelling, and belonged to the circle of
friends of Theodor Fontane who was full of praise for Max. in his steady
progress he outclassed some of his teachers.
New World of the Vedas
and Buddhism
In March 1846, he
crossed over to Paris, which had a special attraction for Indologists as
it was where Antoine Leonard de Chezy, and later Eugene Burnouf, lived.
It was through Burnouf that he became acquainted with the Vedas and
Buddhism. Burnouf’s lectures on the hymns of the Vedas opened a “new
world” for Max, as he writes in his autobiography. Inspired by Burnouf,
he decided to edit the Rigveda, for which purpose he left for London,
where the manuscripts were available. The undertaking was a huge and
costly one. Christian Karl Josias Baron von Bunsen, the Prussian
Ambassador to the Court of St. James, and the East India Company gave
him financial assistance for the project.
At the Bodleian Library
Max Muller made the acquaintance of Professor Wilson of Oxford, the
translator of the Ramayana, who persuaded him to take up his residence
in England. In 1848 he settled at Oxford, and in 1849, after the
publication of the first volume of the Rigveda, he was invited by the
University of Oxford to give a series of lectures on comparative
philology. From that time onwards Muller’s fame gradually grew. He was
made Taylorian Professor of Modern European Languages in 1854, Feollow
of All Souls College in 1858, and a Curator of the Bodleian Library in
1856. Earlier, he was made an honorary M.A. and a member of Christ
Church.
The Sanskrit
Professorship fell vacant in 1860, but theological animosities, which in
a University of ecclesiastical tendencies, not unnaturally assailed the
man who first introduced the University to Kant, prevented his election
to the post. But eight years later a new Professorship of Comparative
Philology was founded, and the statute of foundation named Max Muller as
the first professor. He continued to hold it until his death.
The Rigveda in Six
Volumes
Muller’s edition of the
Rigveda in six big volumes, which took 25 years to complete, is his
greatest contribution to Indology. The book remains the definitive
edition. To Max Muller it seemed unbelievable that the Rigveda, which is
looked upon as a divine revelation representing the highest religious
authority, had up to then never been printed and had remained in the
hands of the priestly class. Only a few opposed its publication. The
vast majority accepted it with thankfulness. Brahman priests even
corrected their own manuscripts with its aid.
One of Max Muller’s best
publications is India – what can it teach us? It sought to remove the
prejudices against India, which he described as a “morass of moral
degradation and an ants’ nest of lies”. One who reads it will wonder how
without first hand knowledge he could have given such vivid details of
India and her peoples. When he was young, he had no money to visit
India, and when he had money later, he had no time. “Just as scholars of
the ancient classical days longed to see Rome or Athens, so do I long to
see Benares and to bathe in the holy waters of the Ganges”, he once
wrote. His attitude to Indian problems was that a patriotic Indian.
Indians revered him as a great friend of their country. His memory is
perpetuated by the Max Muller Bhavan.
“His teaching may be
described as a long protest against materialism in all its forms. He
brought the message of Aryan antiquity before the modern world”.
Although England
accepted him as worthy citizen and treated him well, Max Muller did not
feel quite at home until his marriage with Georgina Grenfell of
Maidenhead in 1859.
His reputation in
England was so high that The Times, London, always opened its columns to
his contributions. He was a great advocate of closer co-operation
between England and Germany. Queen Victoria helm him in high esteem.
Address on religion
in Westminster
In 1873, at the
invitation of Dean Stanley, Max Muller gave an address on religion in
Westminster Abbey – the first layman to do so. The Times described it as
“a singular event.”
“All really great man,”
he once stated, “may be said to live three lives – there is one life
which is seen and accepted by the world at large, a man’s outward life;
there is a second life, which is seen by a man’s intimate friends, his
household life; and there is a third life, seen only by man himself and
by Him who searches the heart.” From the publications of our author,
states The Cabinet Portrait Gallery, 1893, his readers gather with
delight, the impression that in all his three lives, he is really a
great man.
Happy in his domestic
life, his acquaintance with Bunsen developed into a strong friendship,
based as it was alike on a common interest in scholarship and on a broad
and simple religious belief. Among his closest friends he counted also
Charles Kingsley and Dean Stanley.
SIR EDWIN
ARNOLD
Buddhism became widely
known in the West by the publication in 1879 of Sir Edwin Arnold’s
beautiful poem The Light of Asia. The book achieved a phenomenal
success. A second edition appeared within the year of its first
publication. It has had a wider circulation than any other work on
Buddhism.
Five years after the
appearance of the original edition, Arnold revised the text, and the
revisions appear in the authorized editions from 1885 onwards. By that
year Trubner, the publisher had issued over 30 editions. American
pirated editions, however, continued to use the old text for many years.
The book was more widely read in America than even in England. New
editions continued to appear in the 20th Century and the book is still
listed by publishers.
Born on 10 July, 1832,
at Gravesend, Kent, Edwin Arnold was the second son of Robert Coles
Arnold and Sarah Pizzey Arnold of Framfield, Sussex. After his primary
education at King’s School, Rochester, Arnold went to King’s College,
London, where he won a scholarship to University College, Oxford. There
he had the rooms occupied by the poet Shelley. His first poem, The Feast
of the Belshazzar won the Newdigate Prize in 1852. he read it publicly
at the University, in accordance with custom, at the installation of
Lord Derby as Chancellor. Benjamin Disraeli, who listened to it, shook
Arnold warmly by the hand and prophesied a brilliant future for him.
Books – from Greece
to Japan
Arnold’s first complete
book of verse, Poems Narrative and Lyrical appeared in 1853. Keats
influenced him. He was the second layman to give an address in
Westminster Abbey, the first being Max Muller. At the age of 22 he
married Katherine Elizabeth Biddulph, the sister of an undergraduate
friend.
After taking his degree,
he secured a post as a master in King Edward VI School, Birmingham,
which he resigned at the age of 25 to take up the appointment of
Principal of Deccan College in Poona, India. “This appointment of
counted for much in his intellectual and literary development, for it
enabled him to foster that mingled reverence for the religions of the
East and interest in the science of the West which is the mark of his
later writings.”
Meanwhile Arnold had
begun to write on a variety of subjects with the result that he had
published quite a profusion of books – translations from Sanskrit, an
essay on the Greek poets, a treatise on education in India, a history in
two volumes of the administration of Lord Dalhousie, a Turkish grammar
complied in 1877, when the Eastern Question was the great interest in
English politics, an excursion into Mohammedanism in Pearls from Islam’s
Rosary, an elaborate poem founded on an episode in the Boston of the
Persian Sa’aid, and Japonica, sketches from Japan.
In response to a
newspaper advertisement, Arnold applied for and obtained an appointed on
The Daily Telegraph in 1861 as a feature writer. Later he became its
editor and served the paper in all for forty years.
The Teaching in a
Form of Considerable Beauty
“Arnold set about
writing The Light of Asia deliberately as a witness for religious
liberalism. It was composed during busy months when England was in an
uproar over the Eastern Question and when The Daily Telegraph was
fulminating against the Russians abroad and Gladstone at home. He did
not have much spare time and turned to poetry for relaxation in the few
moments which he could snatch from his work. Much of it was written at
Hamlet House, Southend, overlooking the mouth of the Thames. Other pages
were composed at odd moments, while travelling to work by train, or
jotted down on envelopes, margins of newspapers, the back of menus, and
even upon his shirt-cuffs.
Fortunately, he had a
mind impervious to most distractions. If no pen were handy, a pencil
would do, and if that were not to be had, a piece of firewood could be
whittled into shape.”
“The editorial chair of
The Daily Telegraph might seem at first sight, for one with the Eastern
Leanings of Sir Edwin Arnold, more suited to the cultivation of Persian
flowers of style in English prose than to the production of true poetry.
Yet during his editorship his poetic power developed. The Light of Asia
appeared in 1879 and at once, and deservedly, attained popularity. In it
the profound spiritual teaching of the Buddha, interpreted according to
the light of the author’s scholarship, was offered, in a form of
considerable beauty, to the average reader, and thus satisfied the need
for the popular account of the origin of a religion which has such a
significant place in history. His attempt 12 years later to versify
parts of the Christian story in The Light of the World can hardly be
regarded as a comparable work.”
Arguments for
survival
“The Light of Asia is
not the only evidence of Arnold’s interest in the problems which
fascinated the fine minds of the day. In a striking volume, Death and
Afterwards he argues that “it is reasonable to expect a future
existence, for in the presence of the mysteries of life and death, we
may be as near a glad surprise as was Don Quixote, who, after hanging,
as he fancied, found that he dropped just four inches.” This bright
expectation is only a mark of the hopefulness which is characteristic of
his most serious thoughts.”
“His views are summed up
in a letter to The Daily Telegraph, republished in his Seas and Lands,
in which he recounts how when travelling in Japan he was called upon to
address the assembled University of Tokyo. The contrast between the East
and the West led him to turn his discourse upon the range of modern
knowledge and probably never before had poet or journalist so
picturesque an opportunity for a confession of faith. As he spoke he
looked not upon “the immense city, covering with its small black houses
as large an area as London.” Before him “sat or knelt the flower of
Japanese youth, eager to hear, and among them, with shaven heads and
lappets of gold embroidery, the calm brethren of the yellow robe—the
Buddhist monks.” First he directed the attention of this unique audience
to astronomy and pointed out that the great religions of the world were
promulgated under the idea that the earth was the centre of things and
that “the stars were hardly more than pretty mysterious lanterns lighted
to spangle out night time.” But, he continued, in reality the greatness
of our destiny consists, not in our being the centre of creation, but
“in belonging at all to so glorious and visible a galaxy of life, with
the invisible effulgence and infinite possibilities beyond.”
Forty Years of
Literacy Activity
“Arnold had been
everywhere, learned all languages, read everything and written about
everything, sometimes as mere journalist, sometimes as a critical
thinker, sometimes as poet. In the forty years of his literary activity
he had put a girdle around the world of language, of science and of
religious thought. We look to him less for depth than for breadth, less
for original research than for brilliance of exposition, and no one
coming to him with this expectation will be greatly disappointed.”
Eugene Burnouf,
Barthelmey Saint-Hillaire, Spence Hardy and other scholars of the early
and middle 19th century had described Buddhism as “a gospel of
negatation.” But as the century wore on, opinion began to shift. In
1872, Max Muller thought that the negative language of Buddhism was a
later accretion from monkish orthodoxy and that when Nibbana was
explained in positive terms there emerged the authentic tradition of the
Buddha. Rhys Davids agreed with this view. So did J.P Clarke, the
American pioneer of comparative religion. In his preface to The Light of
Asia, Arnold argues that “a third of mankind would never have been
brought to believe in blank abstractions, or in nothingness as the issue
and crown of being.”
The King of Siam, now
Thailand, conferred on Arnold the Order of the White Elephant in
recognition of his services to Buddhism. The Royal letter which
accompanied the award while stating that Arnold’s interpretation of
Buddhism was not strictly orthodox, expressed His Majesty’s gratitude
for writing The Light of Asia “in the most widespread language in the
world.”
Restoration of
Sacred Places
Directly inspired by
reading The Light of Asia, the Anagarika Dharmapala of Ceylon started
his great missionary organization in India to revive Buddhism in the
land of its birth, and to restore Buddhist sacred places such as the
Buddhagaya to their rightful owners. Arnold was a member of the
committee appointed for the purpose. He wrote a powerful article in The
Daily Telegraph, the paper he edited, giving the story of the Buddhagaya
and stressing the justice of the Buddhist claim. In 1889 he went to
Japan and roused the Japanese Buddhist, who formed a society to promote
interest in the Buddhagaya. On his second visit to Japan in 1892, he
declared, in the course of an address, that he would gladly sacrifice
his life if need be in so great a cause as the restoration of the
Buddhagaya. So successful was his pleading that the society set about
making plans to buy land near the sacred site and to send a party of
Japanese Buddhist monks to the Buddhagaya. He wrote a friendly letter to
Hindi to the Mahant, the owner of the sacred site, and sent it together
with a copy of his translation of the Gita as proof of his goodwill to
Hinduism. But nothing came of the negotiations. The final settlement of
the Buddhagaya question, however, was in no small measure due to his
efforts. It was a great achievement to create sympathy in the West for
Buddhism. But an even more remarkable feat was the arousing of the
Buddhist world itself to a realization of its own inheritance.
Arnold never regarded
his admiration of Buddhism as involving any disloyalty to Christianity;
truth could not be diminished by being shared.
Buddhist or
Christian?
But was Arnold a
Buddhist? Answering this question in a letter to the author, the late
Mr. Francis Story states: “whatever may have been of Arnold’s personal
convictions, he was careful to avoid making a public avowal of them, and
even seemed to fear giving suspicion of them. He could not have hoped
for the poet laureateship otherwise. And while non-Christian by birth
have received knighthoods, the Establishments would have looked with
acute disfavour upon a Christian-born English knight who changed his
religion.
“Personally, I have no
doubt Arnold was a Buddhist at heart. But many people in the West still
feel that being a Buddhist does not exact any public avowal. It is not
like Christianity, in which failure to declare one’s faith openly is
reckoned an offence, meriting punishment hereafter. And in Arnold’s
time, more than now, an open declaration of Buddhism by a prominent and
titled man would have caused something of a scandal.”
In his biography of
Arnold, Dr Brooke Wright states that in The Light of the World Arnold
gives “the completest exposition of his religious views.”
As against this,
however, we have recorded in Henry Stanley’s diary that Arnold’s “soul
was not in his song, thought there are beautiful passages in it, but it
is the tone of an unbeliever.” Stanley, it must be remembered, was a man
who persuaded Arnold to write The Light of the World.
It is on record that
after his Buddhist studies, Arnold abandoned the shooting of animals and
birds, a pastime in which he revelled earlier in life. Isn’t that an
index to his observance of the first of the First Buddhist Precepts?
Counted as a
co-religionist by many
Queen Victoria and
Disraeli held Arnold in high esteem. He was knighted for his services to
India and England. He visited Ceylon once, when the residents of
Panadura, Columbo, and Kandy accorded him rousing receptions. It was at
a large gathering of Buddhist monks at Panadura, then, as now, a
Buddhist stronghold, that he mooted the idea of restoring Buddhist
sacred sites in India to Buddhist. He expressed his admiration of the
skill of Sinhalese women in making delicious sweetmeats. Many Buddhist
in Ceylon count him as a co-religionist.
He died on 14 March,
1904.
LORD CHALMERS
Of the non-Buddhists who
served Buddhism as Pali scholars, Lord Chalmers is one of the best
known. He described himself as a pupil and friend of Rhys Davids.
A High Churchman of
England, he not only edited and translated Buddhist texts for the Pali
Text Society, but also contributed liberally to its funds.
Chalmers (then Sir
Robert) arrived in Ceylon as its Governor in 1913. His fame as a Pali
scholar had preceded his arrival in the Island, and the local Pali
scholars, particularly the Buddhist monks, were jubilant. One of his
first public engagements was to preside over the prize-giving at
Vidyodaya Pirivena (Oriental College), Colombo. As he had studied Pali
in Roman script, the monks thought he could not correctly enunciate Pali
words, and they arranged an interpreter to render his English speech in
Sinhalese; but to their utter amazement he replied to their elaborate
Pali address of welcome in an extempore speech in choice Pali,
flawlessly enunciating every word. He concluded his half-hour address
with the equivalent of the following: “May this noble Pali language ever
flourish in Lanka!”
“His study of Pali gave
him a special interest in Buddhists of Ceylon, but the work there did
not call out his special qualities, though it gave him the opportunity
of seeing Buddhist institutions and of making personal acquaintances
with native Pali scholars.”
Abandoned Classics
for Science
Born on 18 August, 1858,
Robert Chalmers was the only son of John and Juliet Chalmers. He went
early to the City of London School, and as a John Carpenter scholar, “he
was lucky to be in the Edwin Abbot’s Sixth Form during the most vigorous
years of that great headmaster, when his pupils were very much alive to
the fact they were sharing the studies of an exact and fine scholar, an
unflagging writer, an active controversialist. He was thus one who
carried on Abbot’s influence in church, state, and letters to the credit
of the School land the City.”
In 1877, Chalmers
entered Oriel College, Oxford, as a classical scholar. He took a “First”
in classical Moderations, but abandoned classics and read science,
obtaining a “Second” in the biology group. At one time he had the
intention of taking to medicine as a career. In 1882 he topped the list
of successful candidates in the open competitive examination for
admission to the Higher Administrative Division of the Civil Service,
and entered the Treasury.
“His progress at the
Treasury was rapid; he excelled in accountancy, statistics and finance.
In 1903 he was an assistant secretary, but he was not quite happy there,
and would have been glad to go as an Accountant-General in the
Admirality: better things were, however, reserved for him. He went to
the Board of Inland Revenue as Chariman in 1907, and during four years
built up a reputation for ability and astuteness.
Short Temure as
Governor of Ceylon
“In 1911 he became
Permanent Secretary of the Treasury and Auditor of the Civil List. Two
years later he moved to a more picturesque and more valuable post as
Governor of Ceylon. To other attractions which Ceylon had for him was
added his interest in Pali, of which, on its literary side, he was an
acknowledged master. But the serious riots that occurred during his term
of office presented problems which were not to his liking, nor, indeed,
such as he could treat successfully. Severe things were said and
published on the measures which he had taken, and his successor frankly
condemned some of these.
“In any case, he had
neither pleased the natives nor Europeans and was glad to return in 1916
as Joint Permanent Secretary to the Treasury. That office he filled for
a period of three years, including an unrestful interlude during which
he was induced Mr. Asquith to try his hand at an uncongenial task as
Under-Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He abandoned this
with undisguised satisfaction after less than three months’ trial.”
On his retirement from
the Civil Service, Chalmers accepted the post of Master of Peterhouse,
Cambridge, in 1924 and remained there until 1931. his son had been a
student at Peterhouse, and he had himself spent a vacation there, and
knew the Fellows of the College. Although he had had no experience of
academic work, he proved himself to be a great success.
In a letter to the
author, Mr. H. Butterfield, Registrat of Peterhouse, Cambridge, states:
“I seem to remember him (Chalmers) telling me that when he was a member
of the Civil Service he felt that he had energies left over for a more
academic kind of work and that he chose Pali as a well defined area
which he felt that he could cover. When he was here I heard him once or
twice recommend a similar policy to students who were entering the Civil
Service.”
“It was a saying a
Chalmers that every man ought to drive two horses, abreast, one for his
business or profession and the other for some scholarly hobby which
would give him relief from his work and occupation in his later days.”
Best Evidence of his
Scholarship
Prompted partly by his
study of Sanskrit at the University. He took up the study of Pali.
Another attraction of Pali was his enthusiasm for the work of the great
scholar, Professor Rhys Davids. He became a pupil of Rhys Davids, and a
member of the Pali Text Society. He joined the company of scholars
formed by Professor E.B. Cowell of Cambridge with the object of
translating the Jataka book, the first volume of which, published in
1895, and dedicated to Rhys Davids, was Chalmers’ work, and was much
appreciated by Cowell for its spirited vigour. “The best evidence of his
(Chalmers’) Pali scholarship is in this translation.”
At the Paris Congress in
1897, Chalmers gave a learned address on the Pali term Tathagata which
evoked much interest. From 1895 to 1902, under the guidance of Rhys
Davids, he completed the first edition of the Pali text of the Second
Collection (Nikaya) in the first division (Sutta Pitaka): Discourses of
the Buddha in the Majjima Nikaya under the guidance of Rhys Davids (2
VOls. 1896-1902): Translation, 1926-1927, as Further Dialogues of the
Buddha. Work on the first edition had been commenced by V. Treckner, the
distinguished Danish philologist.
In his Cambridge period,
Lord Chalmers produced his last work of scholarship – a metrical
translation of the Sutta Nipata, the earliest teachings of the Buddha in
Pali verse. This translation “is more remarkable for its style than its
precise literary accuracy. He showed literary skill in his translations,
sought out good English equivalents for technical terms of Buddhism, cut
short the remorseless repetitions.”
Disinterested and
Friendly Spirit
Chalmers presented his
fine Pali library to Miss I.B. Horner, the then Librarian of Newnham
College, Cambridge, and now President of the Pali Text Society.
“He was extremely
hospitable and brought the College into touch with outside interests and
distinguished persons. He was recognized at once as a disinterested and
friendly spirit and his overflowing kindness, often secretly exercised,
such an entertaining during the vacation at his own expense and in his
own house, poorer scholars who could not afford to continue in
residence, earned him much goodwill. He kept himself aloof from academic
intrigues and never pursued power or influence.”
He was an LL.D. of
Oxford, Cambridge and St. Andrew’s; D. Litt. Oxford, Fellow of Oriel
College, a Trustee of the British Museum; Fellow of the British Academy,
and President of the Royal Asiatic Society.
Lord Chalmers first
married Maud Mary, daughter of J.G. Forde Piggott, in 1888. She died in
1923. There were two sons, one a professional soldier and the other a
barrister. Both of them fell in World War I in 1915. His daughter
married Sir Malcolm Stevenson. In 1935 Lord Chalmers married Iris
Florence, widow of Professor R. Latta, and a daughter of Sir John Biles.
There were no children by the second marriage, and as he died (at 80)
without a surviving male child the peerage became extinct.
F. L. WOODWARD
The name of F.L.
Woodward scintillates among Pali scholars who edited and translated
sacred texts of the Buddhists for the Pali Text Society. But Woodward is
remembered in Ceylon more for his great service to the education of
Buddhist boys than for his profound Pali scholarship.
It is not generally
known that he spent f 2,000 of his patrimony at the beginning of the
present century to erect buildings for a Buddhist school in the south of
Ceylon-Mahinda College, Galle- in which he served for sixteen years as
Principal without drawing the salary attached to the post. The school
funds met his bare expenses. A confirmed bachelor, he lived on a purely
vegetable diet. He invariably wore a white suit while in Ceylon. He
never went home on a holiday. Simplicity was the keynote of his life,
which moved Mrs. Rhys Davids once to describe him as a “recluse.”
The third son of the
Rev. W. Woodward of Saham, Norfolk, England, Frank Lee Woodward was born
on 13 April, 1871. As a boy of eight he mastered the Elementary Latin
Course, and began the study of Greek, French and German. In 1879, he
joined Christ Hospital, where he won the Latin and French prizes on
three occasions. Besides his academic brilliance, he possessed
remarkable athletic prowess. At the age of 14 he was a member of the
House Fifteen, and two years later was a perfect and one of the First
Fifteen. For several years he held the record for Putting the Weight and
annexed prizes in most athletic events.
Pupil and teacher became
close friends
At eighteen he entered
Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge winning the first classical
scholarship, and at nineteen was awarded the Gold Medal for Latin verse
and an exhibition. He became College organist, won the prize for Latin
essay and passed the Classical Tripos examination with honours in the
third year of his admission to the University. He also held office as
Rugby football Captain, Vice-captain of Boats, Athletic Secretary and
full-back in the Association Football Team.
He served the Rugby
Preparatory School for a short period as an assistant master. Later, he
became classics master at the Royal Grammar School, Worcester, where he
taught for three years until 1897. While there he rowed the Worcester
City Boat to victory at many a regatta, and won honour for Worcester and
the Midland Counties on the football field.
Stamford School, an
ancient foundation in Lincolnshire, was where he next served. He taught
there for five years from 1895 as second master. E.M. Hare became close
friends. During his five-year period at Stamford he devoted a good deal
of his time to the study of both Western and Eastern philosophy, Pali
and Sanskrit, English literature, and religion. It was he who persuaded
Hare to study Pali.
Woodward joined the
Theosophical Society in 1902. He described his becoming a member of it
as “the most important event” in his life, for it led to his acceptance
of the Buddha’s teachings.
In a letter to Col. H.S.
Olcott, the then President of the Theosophical Society, Woodward offered
his service to the East, and Olcott gladly accepted the offer, for at
that time the latter had been requested, by Buddhists to find a head for
Mahinda College, in Ceylon. On 1 August, 1903, Woodward landed in the
town of Galle.
More than the architect
of Mahinda
He found Mahinda College
housed in an old Dutch building in the busy part of the Fort of Galle.
The attendance was only 60. His high academic attainments and long
experience as a teacher in public schools in England soon became known
all over the country and parents began to remove their sons from other
schools and send them to Mahinda College. One of them, now a
nonagenarian, Mr. Vincent de Silva, says that he still remembers the
Latin that Woodward taught him. He often speaks of his old teacher with
affection and gratitude. The numbers on the roll rapidly rose to 300-the
maximum that could be accommodated in the building.
Woodward himself
selected the present site of Mahinda, some public-spirited residents of
the area donating the lands. He was not merely the architect of the
school, but its foreman of works as well. He was often seen with a
trowel in hand among masons. Sometimes he would be on the scaffoldings
taking measurements. His identity is concealed in the name of “Vanapala”
(Sinhalese for Woodward) among the names on a brass plate in a set of
classrooms.
Woodward was a strict
disciplinarian. He set a very high tone in the college and it made rapid
progress under his able direction. He, however, sought no publicity. He
was revered for his self-sacrifice, his generosity and his erudition.
One of his many efforts was directed at establishing Sinhalese as a
subject for the Cambridge Local examinations which were then held in
Ceylon. He was a pioneer of the Ceylon University movement.
He used to wear the
simple garb of a white shirt and white cloth and to observe the Eight
Precepts of Buddhism on full moon days, setting a noble example to his
pupils and neighbours. Occasionally he would offer alms to Buddhist
monks in the school hall, himself serving the meals with great humility,
and would himself wash and wipe the feet of the monks as they came in
single file for the alms-giving.
He taught various
classes for several hours a day, besides attending to administrative
matters. He knew every pupil of the school both by name, and by
nickname-all given by him and drawn from Shakespearian characters. One
of them was Caliban.
Regular donations to Society
Woodward left Galle on 7
October, 1919, for Tasmania, where he grew apples for his livelihood,
and edited and translated Pali texts. He made regular donations to the
Pali Text Society.
In 1936, upon the
publication of 15 volumes of a complete translation of the Digha,
Majjhima, Samyutta and Anguttara Nikayas, Mrs. Rhys Davids declared:
“More specially our tribute is due to him ( Woodward ) who has borne the
major burden, translating alone six of the fifteen volumes, giving aid
in a seventh and now crowning our labours with this last volume. To all
this must be added his recently issued translations of two Minor
Anthologies in the Sacred Books of the Buddhist series Udana and
Iti-vuttaka, and his first edition of the Samyutta Commentary. Very
worthily has he stood in the breach left by the untimely death of
Richard Morris and Edmund Hardy. That we can look forward in a few years
to completing our scheduled
programme is largely due
to him.”
Mrs. Rhys Davids added
that Woodward had undertaken all those labours while resting from “
agricultural toil”, and not looking for any reward save that which good
work done brings.
E. M. HARE
An Englishman, who was
in the tea business in Ceylon from 1918 to 1950, earned a high
reputation as a Pali scholar and competent editor and translator of
Buddhist texts. He was Edward Miles Hare.
Born on 4 March, 1893,
Hare hailed from a Norfolk family on the east side of England. He was
educated at Stamford Grammar School, Lincolnshire, where F.L. Woodward,
before he came out to Ceylon in 1903, had been an assistant master. Hare
came to know Woodward as his teacher, and in later life the two became
very close friends. Inspired by Woodward, he began the study of Pali,
and by the time he came out to Ceylon as a businessman he had mastered
the language.
While engaged in
business in Ceylon, he spent his leisure hours in editing and
translating Buddhists texts for the Pali Text Society, London. His
rendering into English of the Anguttara Nikaya (Gradual Sayings),
volumes 2 and 3 (1934-1935), and Sutta Nipata (Woven Cadences), 1945, is
considered outstanding.
On his return to England
after retirement in 1950, he undertook the enormous task of editing the
Pali Tipitakam Concordance from material collected to some extent by
himself and a few scholars, but principally by his friend F.L. Woodward.
Working at great speed, he produced in all 10 parts of the Concordance,
i.e. volume 1 in seven parts and volume 2 in three parts, the value of
which has been acclaimed by Pali scholars in all parts of the world.
Always a generous donor
to the Pali Text Society, Hare had bequeathed it a sum of f 1,000 with
the wish that the money be applied, if possible, towards the cost of
publishing the Concordance.
He died on 26 October,
1955.
GEORGE TURNOUR
George Turnour’s
translation into English of the Mahavamsa, the great chronicle of
Ceylon, in the 19th century, was called by Rhys Davids “the foundation
of all Pali scholarship.”
A member of the Ceylon
Civil Service, George Turnour, while serving in Ranapura (City of Gems),
came in contact with a learned Buddhist monk from whom he learnt Pali
and Sinhalese. He read the Mahavamsa, and it did not take him long to
realize its importance not only to Ceylon but also to the West. So he
decided to translate it into English.
He obtained a copy of
the Mahavamsa Tika, a prose commentary on the chronicle, which is in
Pali verse, and which Sinhalese scholars had preserved side by side with
the original Mahavamsa. Had it not been for the commentary, Turnour
would have found it very difficult to give an exact rendering of the
Mahavamsa in English.
For ten long years
Turnour persevered with the great task, guided by his friend, the
scholar-monk. And in 1837 he published his combined edition and
translation of thirty-eight chapters of the one-hundred chapters of the
Mahavamsa. The publication created no little interest in the West.
Turnour’s translation
spurred the Colonial office in Westminster to evince interest in the
ruined cities of Ceylon, and in 1868 the Governor of Ceylon, Sir
Hercules Robinson, appointed a commission to make a record of all rock
inscriptions in the country. This was the beginning of Ceylon’s
archaeological department, and through its efforts it was possible to
identify the stupendous dagobas or stupas, the palatial mansions that
housed the monks in the days of Sinhalese kings, and the vast irrigation
works that helped food production. The authorities had the jungle that
overran the ruined cities cleared: they also restored irrigation works.
Elated by the success of
his publication, Turnour took upon himself the translation of the second
half of the Mahavamsa, but ill-health prevented him from doing so. He
died in Naples in 1843, the year in which Rhys Davids was born.
NANAMOLI THERA
Osbert Moore, an
Englishman, who graduated from Oxford, and served as an officer in the
British army during World War II, spent eleven years in Ceylon as a
Buddhist monk, and died there in 1960.
An erudite Pali scholar,
he translated into English the abstruse Visuddhimagga, the
post-canonical commentary on Buddhism by the illustrious Indian Buddhist
monk Buddhaghosa, besides a number of canonical works for the Pali Text
Society.
Meetings with Ceylonese Monks
Born in England on 25
June, 1905, Osbert Moore was educated at Exeter College, Oxford. He
served in the British army in Italy where he had a friend, Harold Musson,
also an army officer. Both of them became interested in Buddhism after
reading an Italian work on Buddhism entitled Dottrina del Risveglio by
J. Evola.
Back in England after
the war, Moore joined the B.B.C. and lived in the same flat with his
war-time friend Musson. During this time he and Musson translated
Evola’s book into English and published it under the title of The
Doctrine of Awakening. To further their knowledge of Buddhism, the two
of them visited Ceylon in 1949, and met with the German monk Nyanatiloka
Maha Thera at the Island Hermitarge, Dodanduwa, Ceylon, and Pelane
Vajiranana Maha Nayaka Thera at Vajiramaya, Colombo. Nyanatiloka
ordained them in 1949 as novices. The next year they received the
Upasampada or Higher Ordination with Vajiranana as their preceptor.
At the age of 49,
Nanamoli applied himself assiduously to the study of Pali, Sinhalese,
and Burmese, and quickly mastered the languages. Equipped thus, he began
a brilliant study of the Dhamma. Soon he became an erudite scholar.
Besides the
Visuddhimagga, he translated for the Pali Text Society, London, the
Patisambhida Magga, Nettipakarama, and Petakopadesa. These translations
provide ample evidence of his sound grasp of the Dhamma. He also wrote a
biography of the Buddha and translated the Majjhima Nikaya.
His wants were few and
he scrupulously observed over 200 rules of the Code of Discipline a monk
is expected to observe. Up to the time of his death – a period of eleven
years – he wore the yellow robe presented to him at his ordination. He
rarely wore sandals.
Life – a joke in rather bad taste
“He was a calm and
understanding nature”, writes Mr. Ananda Pereira, Deputy
Solicitor-General, Ceylon, in a tribute to his memory. “He spoke
quietly, in gentle, cultured tones. His words were pearls of wisdom, and
through them ran a silver thread of humour. Speaking of life, he once
said that at times it reminded him of a joke in rather bad taste. One
feels that he met death too in the same spirit. He had faced it often
enough, in its most violent form during the war, and it held no terrors
for him. And surely, death has seldom come to a man more unexpectedly or
inappropriately. Nananoti endeared himself to all those with whom he
came into contact. Pleasantness was personified in him. It was a delight
to listen to him.
His untimely death was a
great loss to Buddhism.
E. J. THOMAS
“The real greatness of
Buddhist morality is in the truly ethical character of its teaching,”
declared Dr. E.J. Thomas, one of England’s most brilliant Buddhist
scholars.
His The History of
Buddhist Thought, which he wrote in 1935, has been acclaimed as a
penetrating analysis of Buddhism, particularly Theravada. Equally
brilliant are his The Life of Buddha as Legend and History, and Early
Buddhist Scriptures (translation from Pali), The Road to Nirvana
(translation from Pali), The Quest of Enlightenment (translation from
the scriptures of the Indiand Sanskrit Schools), and Ratana Sutta
(translation from Pali) - a wordrune ascribed to the Buddha.
He is remembered with
affection and gratitude by innumerable Pali scholars both in the East
and the West for the great encouragement he gave them in their studies.
Bequeathed Library to University
Thomas loved Ceylon as a
recognized home of Pali, and he bequeathed his entire library to the
University of Ceylon, Peradeniya.
Born on 30 July, 1869,
Edward Joseph Thomas was the son of a gardener at Thornhill Rectory in
Yorkshire during the incumbency of the Rev. J.I. Brookes, “a man of some
wealth, part of which it was his pleasure to spend in assisting
promising, local boys to a grammar school education. But E.J. Thomas was
not one of them, though he was of a studious turn, and almost as early
as he could remember used to save his pennies till they would buy
something at the second hand bookshops in the adjacent towns.”
At the age of 14 he left
school and went to work as a gardener for the next 12 years; “but we
should be wrong in interpreting this as a reluctant apprenticeship to
his father’s trade; despite an unlucky handicap of colour-blindness, he
retained all his life a profound love of flowers and gardening; and he
did well at it. But he busied himself in other ways too; for when in
1894 he went to spend a year as a student gardener at Kew he already had
the London Matriculation Certificate (1st Division) in Botany,
Mechanics, Latin, Greek, English, and Mathematics. While there he
obtained certificates in Elementary Physics and Chemistry and in various
branches of Botany. It was presumably during this period that he decided
to devote himself to linguistic studies.
Most eminent English-speaking authority
“In 1896 he entered the
University of St. Andrew’s, where under John Burnet, Professor of Greek,
he eventually graduated M.A (1990-1901) with First Class Honours in
Classics. His other subjects of examination were Mathematics, Moral
Philosophy, and Greek. In this last, which foreshadowed his subsequent
philological learning, he was a pupil of A. N. Jannaris, author of what
is still perhaps the only scholarly dictionary of English and Modern
Greek. In 1903, at the age of 34, … Thomas came to Emmanuel College as
an Advance Student, drawn probably by the already wide repute of Peter
Giles; at all events, philology was his special subject in the Classical
Tripos Part II which in 1905 gave him his Cambridge B. A. It was by this
course that he came to the study of Sanskrit and Pali, and so of the
Buddhist scriptures and religion, on which he became, in time, the most
eminent English-speaking authority. His appointment in 1909 as an
Under-Librarian saw him make Cambridge his home for the remainder of his
long life. For many years he was in charge there of all foreign books,
and his knowledge of languages continued to grown phenomenally in all
directions; any book on any unrecognized tongue would be referred to
him, and he could usually identify it; but for the latter part of his
life at the University Library he was head of the Oriental Languages
Department, and when he “retired” in 1940, he was almost at once asked
to take charge of the Library of the Oriental Faculty, where he worked
until about 1950. Though his publications include an edition of
Plautus’s Anlularia (1913) and a Danish conversation grammar (1926); his
really important works were all concerned with Buddhism: The Life of
Buddha as Legend and History (1927), The History of Buddhist Thought
(1933), and a number of volumes of translations of Buddhist scriptures,
the latest of which were published as recently as 1952. In this field
Thomas was the master scholar, not only in Cambridge but throughout
Europe and beyond; even in his eighty-sixth year and later he was in
demand, examining research these, reviewing books, and corresponding
with scholars from Holland to India who sought his advice or his
contribution to learned publications.
Teaching—Modestly and Effectively
“He was a D. Litt of his
old University of St. Andrew’s; the London School of Oriental and
African Studies made him an Honorary Fellow; as erudite a man as
Professor Hector Chadwick could declare that Thomas was the most learned
man in Cambridge; but there were very few who were even capable of
knowing how much knew, and he would have been the last man in the world
even to dream of telling them. He was, indeed, a most modest, shy and
retiring man; knowing so many foreign tongues yet he was yet never heard
to utter a sentence in any of them; even in his own he asked to be
excused when invited to speak at a Library Staff Annual Dinner. But when
asked for information or advice, whether in the library or everywhere
(and if he had his bowler on he was not officially there), he was
unfailingly kind and helpful; he still knew the British flora by note;
but in far more unexpected subjects he could give an answer; on almost
all he could set the enquirer in the way of finding it.”
“He examined for
authorities as far apart as Dublin and Ceylon; perhaps he really did
more teaching than if he had been formally a lecturer or professor, and
it was done effectively because so modestly. Professor Das Gupta’s
preface to his History of Indian Philosophy reveals one who was indebted
to his help; and there must have been hundreds more. Those who as
undergraduates have had him among the audience for their papers at the
Emmanuel Classical Society would have been appalled to know before what
massive learning they delivered themselves; but he never let on. He was
signally silent in company, but could take a quiet pleasure in such
occasions as the “E” Book Club auction, or a river outing of the library
staff, when his favourite shag (carried generally in a paper bag) took
the place of small-talk. He had married, but his German wife died in the
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