User:Wife.of.mothman/Pali Text Society

The Society's Purpose

The Pali Text Society was founded with the goal of spreading the academic merit of Buddhism across Europe. It is a learned Society, dedicated not only to the translation of the Pali Canon, but to the publication of a variety of Buddhist literature, the teaching of the Pali language, and to spread their publications to libraries across Europe. The Pali Text Society, specifically its founder, Thomas William Rhys Davids, and his wife, Carolina Augusta Foyley Rhys Davids,  have been attributed to creating the discipline of Buddhist studies. Scholar George D. Bond writes that the historical significance of the Davids’ family work, as well as the Society’s work, “contributes to a new understanding of the British Raj in India and Ceylon”. Furthermore, the Davids’s understood that not only did Buddhism in Sri Lanka hold a rich religious history, but that Pali itself was the second oldest language East Asian religious texts had been recorded in, the first being the Vedanic tradition. The linguistic merit of Pali was so culturally significant because, as Foyley writes, the language was “as dead as is Latin, and yet as alive, built out of old Indian dialects as the vehicle of the Canon…”.

Thomas William Rhys Davids Connection to the Pali Text Society

The motivation for the formation of the Pali Text Society has its roots in Thomas William Rhys Davids’ Civil Service career. Since he had familial connections to ministry, and he received his education in Germany, studying both Greek and Sanskrit, Rhys Davids was employed by the British government to serve as an administrator in Sri Lanka from 1864 to 1872. During this decade of his career, Rhys Davids was posted in both Galle and Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka, serving as a clergyman, a judge, Secretary to Governor William Henry Gregory, and as Archeological Commissioner. According to scholarly reviews of his work by George D. Bond and Ananda Wickremeratne,  Rhys Davids’ Civil Service work was dedicated to the process of Anglicization, and committed to “instilling English ideas of industry and liberty among people”. However, his wife, Carolina Foyley Rhys Davids, documents that her husband, despite both his familial and educational ties to the study of religion, was atheist, and that his fascination with Sri Lankan culture came from a place of greater academic cultural curiosity.

It was a common recurrence that members of the Anglican clergy would hold public debates against the Buddhists clergy and lay people alike of Sri Lanka. While these debates were intended to be demonstrations of Christian superiority, they actually increased the interest in Buddhism, both in the community and for Rhys Davids. From there, Rhys Davids went on to study the Pali language and Sinhalese with Ceylon Monk, Yatramulle Sri Dhammarama. Dhammarama was the one who taught Rhys Davids of the Pali Canon, on which he later dedicated his public career to, including the formation of the Pali Text Society. Although, in Europe during this period of time, Buddhist studies did not exist as an academic discipline, Rhys Davids sought to challenge Eurocentric ideas of Christian supremacy in order to argue in support of Buddhism as a valid religious area of knowledge. Despite his apparent atheism, as a scholar, Rhys Davids could appreciate faith through an understanding of uncovered knowledge. According to Foyley, Rhys Davids’ goal for the Pali Text Society was to “fructify the new attention that had just begun to be given to monastic libraries of ‘palm-leaf manuscripts’” .

The Contributions of Women to the Society: Carolina Augusta Foyley Rhys Davids

In Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Carolina Augusta Foyley Rhys Davids recounts how by 1936, the society was losing financial support due to the economic state of the country during The Great Depression. Following the passing of her husband, Thomas William Rhys Davids, in 1922, Foyley took over the Society’s president; like her husband, her career was in Buddhist Studies, and she was a scholar of both the Pali language and Sanskrit. However, because Foyley’s educational background was in economics, she was the one that managed the Society’s finances, and furthermore, it was Foyley who helped pull the Society out of debt.

Foyley dedicated her entire career to completing the work of her late husband. Under her presidency, she was able to publish two editions of "Journal of the Pali Text Society", both which took roughly three years to complete. She also continued to work on the translations of the classic Pali Texts, including two volumes on the translation of Apadna, published by the Society in 1925 and 1927 respectively. A 1926 annual report, published in the second edition of The Journal of the Pali Text Society (1924-1927), reveals that the Society had recently published a new Pali Dictionary to replace Robert Caesar Childers's, which Foyley quoted to be "antiquated and imperfect", the funding of which was provided by donors in Japan. In that same report, Foyley mentions how the publication of the new dictionary was one of the most costly expenses over the past three years, but how support from donations and subscriptions to the Society's works helped to keep the Society financially stable, both attributed to Foyley's economic genius.

The following is the subscription plan for the Pali Text Society, as Foyley records it in the 1926 report:

"The Subscription to the Society is One Guinea a year, for texts, or a text and Journals, and ten shillings a year for a translation, payable in advance.

Publications, two volumes a year, and, when possible, a translation, are sent post free on receipt of the subscription.

Back issues are sent post free on payment of the subscription for the year, or years, in which the volumes were issued (that is, of One Guinea a year or a proportional payment per volume). But the payment for issues dating prior to 1901 is now increased 50 per cent".

Upon acknowledging how little time she had left, she wrote in a diary entry "It is not likely I shall be here to finish to our work”, referring to the re-issuing of the original translations of Vinaya, Milinda, and Jataka. Foyley passed away in 1942, leaving the presidency of the Society to William Henry Denham Rouse.

Article Draft

References

Bhikkhu, Ariyajyoti. Mrs. Caroline Rhys Davids, WordPress, 21 June 2020

Bond, George D. “Thomas William Rhys Davids.” History of Religions, vol. 27, no. 1, 1987, pp. 104–06. JSTOR

Davids, C. A. F. Rhys. “INDIA AND THE PALI TEXT SOCIETY.” Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, vol. 23, no. 1/4, 1942, pp. 80–83. JSTOR

Rhys Davids , Carolina. Journal of the Pali Text Society (1924-1927), vol. 2, no. 2, 1927

Lad, Gouri P. “TEXTILES IN THE VINAYA PITAKA.” Bulletin of the Deccan College Research Institute, vol. 49, 1990, pp. 227–35. JSTOR

M. H. B. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, no. 1, 1922, pp. 127–32. JSTOR

Mutukumara, Nemsiri. “Establishing Pali Text Society for Buddhist Literature.” Establishing Pali Text Society for Buddhist Literature, The Daily News (Sri Lanka), 18 Oct. 2003

“On the Importance of the Pali Text Society Translations.” Give Ear: On the Importance of the Pali Text Society Translations, Pali Text Society , 12 Feb. 2020

Pali Text Society. “Texts in Pali .” Original Texts in Pali, The Pali Text Society

Stede, W. “Caroline Augusta Foley Rhys Davids: (27th September, 1857-26th June, 1942).” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, no. 3, 1942, pp. 267–68.

University of Cambridge. “Thomas William Rhys Davids (1843-1922), Professor of Comparative Religion, Founder and President of the Pali Text Society 1881-1922.” Thomas William Rhys Davids, University of Cambridge

Wickremeratne, Ananda. “The Genesis of an Orientalist: Thomas William Rhys Davids and Buddhism in Sri Lanka.” THE JOURNAL OF THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF BUDDHIST STUDIES , vol. 10, 1987, pp. 161–164.