A NOBEL FOR THE PALI TEXT SOCIETY ? T. W. RHYS DAVIDS WRITES TO THE NOBEL COMMISSION OF THE SWEDISH ACADEMY* Eugen Ciurtin Nearly one century ago, when all Europe crossed the threshold of a first world war, septuagenarian Thomas William Rhys Davids resolved to write to the Swedish Academy in Stockholm in order to plead for a Nobel Prize for literature to be granted to the cumulative labours of the Pali Text Society. The event and its circumstances eluded, it seems, the public record and scholarly remembrance. Two letters of 1915, apparently sent to Nathan Söderblom, are extant, and this brief note would like to present them according to the worth they may have for the Pali scholar. Since its 125th anniversary Festschrift, the Pali Text Society and the Journal of the Pali Text Society have regularly included contributions to Pali historiography as a major part of the history of Buddhist and Asian Studies outside, yet in close alliance with, Asia.1 This most valiant yet unnoticed plea would hence augment the sources for a refined history of modern Pali learning.2 * I am much obliged for earlier discussions (in Bucharest, in Paris, or from Danderyd in litteris) to the late Professor Siegfried Lienhard (1924–2011) as well as to the editors, Professors Oskar von Hinüber and Rupert M.L. Gethin, and members of PTS Council, particularly Professor Nalini Balbir (who directed me to the JPTS), for comments and for including this note in the very Journal Rhys Davids founded. I am thankful as always to my sister Dr.dr.med. Coziana Ciurtin (University College London) for additional British support. 1 Siegfried Lienhard (2007) together with Siegfried Lienhard (2009), Jonathan A. Silk, (2012), Erik Braun and William Pruitt (2012). For an overview of the recent historiographical advances in Indic and Buddhist Studies outside Asia, see Eugen Ciurtin (2010). 2 Notwithstanding the spate of (certainly uneven) scholarship during the last decades, not only Pali, but Buddhist Studies in general benefit from no general Journal of the Pali Text Society, Vol. XXXII (2015), pp. 195–212 196 Eugen Ciurtin The unique role T.W. Rhys Davids (1843–1922)3 played, together with his former pupil, then colleague and wife Caroline Augusta Foley Rhys Davids (1857–1942), for the study of Pali and Buddhism, and the existence of Pali Text Society, needs no particular emphasis in this setting, since, as Oskar von Hinüber writes, “The Society was dominated for the first 61 years — almost half of its existence — by the Rhys Davids family.”4 Was such entreaty rather implausible from the point of view of the Nobel Commission ? Since its inception and up to the death of Rhys Davids, there were several Nobel Prizes for literature in some way related to South Asia : two of the honourees were born or lived there — Rudyard Kipling, who received it in 1907, and especially Rabindranath Tagore, as the first Asian, in 1913. Tagore was in fact the last Nobel winner Rhys Davids heard of, but he missed Tagore’s acceptance speech, as Tagore came to Stockholm only in 1921. Meanwhile, no Nobel prizes were awarded in 1914, as Rhys Davids noted, nor eventually in 1918. In 1915, the very year he contemplated the chances of the Pali Text Society, the honour was bestowed upon one of his readers : Romain Rolland (1866–1944). And again in 1917, the winner (ex aequo) was the Danish-German Karl Adolph Gjellerup (1857–1919, having the apposite penname “Epigonos”), who reportedly “moved from Lutheran to atheist/naturalist to Buddhism and mystical Christianity”5 and whose Pilgrimen / Der Pilger Kamanita (1906) has already received special work similar in intent, penetration and vistas to Louis Renou’s Les maîtres de la philologie védique (Renou 1928), except Jan Willem de Jong’s A Brief History of Buddhist Studies in Europe and America, which is somewhat dismissive of the Rhys Davidses), with a very similar complement, for IndoIranian and Zoroastrian past (scholarship), by Jean Kellens 2006 (see n. 16). 3 Most obituaries and valuable secondary and tertiary literature on Rhys Davids are listed in Yasuhiro Sueki 2008 (under § M2.016), who misses only Judith Snodgrass 2007. 4 Oskar von Hinüber 2007, xi. 5 Louise S. Shelby (ed.) 2002, 73. A Nobel for the Pali Text Society ? 197 (although mixed) criticism, not the least from Buddhist scholars in Europe and afterwards from the monastic milieu in South-East Asia. Recipient of the Nobel of 1921, Anatole France (1844–1924) assumed already in the 1890s that, comparing the spread and persistence of Buddhism in Asia, “If one reflects, its fortune in Europe during the last sixty years has been no less extraordinary.”6 This fortune, without any doubt, played a part in the works of Rhys Davids. European engouement for things Buddhist in the public sphere was just broadly spreading. Alfred Nobel’s older brother Ludvig (1831–1888) even christened an oil tanker he designed in 1878 (measuring some 207 Ÿ 27 Ÿ 9 feet for a capacity of 860 tonnes) as Buddha (other ones were called Brahma, Zoroaster, and even Darwin), right before the greater impact of Edwin Arnold’s Light of Asia. Sporadic as they may appear, such nugae of Nobel recipients might have been contributory to the prospect nurtured by the British scholar. Rhys Davids had, it goes without saying, approached quite a few public authorities of many sorts, including some imperial ones. He hence benefited for instance from a Civil List life pension from the 1890s, bestowed upon him by Prime Minister Gladstone,7 and in 1899–1900 he strenuously appealed to the then Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, to establish a collection of historical books on South Asia. The very neutrality of Sweden during the war also increased a much looked-for positive perspective. Indeed, the letters date from the beginning of the most difficult period for the Pali Text Society, as K.R. Norman stresses, “[S]hortage of money created many problems in the years between the two world wars. Some of the Annual Reports for years in that period make sorry reading.”8 Besides this, Article 10 of the PTS by-laws clearly stipulated, “No member 6 In the minor piece “Bouddhisme”, France 1902, 380: “En Europe, sa fortune depuis soixante ans n’est pas moins extraordinaire, si l’on y songe”), translated by D.B. Stuart 1922, 362). 7 More details in Andrew Huxley’s 2013 SOAS inaugural lecture on “T.W. Rhys Davids and the Forged Relics of the Buddha”. 8 K.R. Norman 1981, 71/195. 198 Eugen Ciurtin shall be entitled to any profit from any working of the Society” (see for example JPTS, Vol. 7 (1917–1919), p. vi). As literally thousands of present-day contributions in Buddhist studies straightforwardly prove, Rhys Davids remains an inescapable author, and his letters9 do have inherent worth. Even the residence from where he wrote to Sweden — by the same token a letter meant for the Commission’s Secretary Harald Hjärne (1848–1922)? — has notable resonance for generations of his readers. Chipstead housed the creation of the first massive Pali library in Europe, including the arduous preparation of the Pali–English Dictionary. It was at that very time a “peaceful cottage on the Surrey Hill overlooking the Railway Station”, as remembered one early Indian student of theirs, Benimadhab Barua (1888–1948),10 the first Asian to receive a D.Litt. from the University of London, precisely as a pupil of Rhys Davids in 1914–1917. Nonetheless, another feature motivates, above and beyond the unusual appeal for the Nobel Prize, this publication of the letters and some tentative remarks. As perhaps nowhere else in his writings except in a short overview published in 1900,11 Rhys Davids argues that the works of the Society had already contributed a great deal to a proper Pali (and Buddhist) renaissance of utmost general relevance, being therefore authorized to further articulate its findings, goals, and public potential. In spite of the wartime urges, Rhys Davids found himself also best equipped to recap the work of the Society, for an audience definitely less well acquainted with the Pali Text Society’s scholarship : “It may be best compared with that of the few scholars at the time of the Renaissance, who rescued and published the still surviving remains of Greek literature.” The statement 9 The papers and correspondence of the Rhys Davidses are preserved by the Faculty of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies of the University of Cambridge, see http://www.ames.cam.ac.uk/faclib/archive/rhys.html (accessed 29 September 2013). 10 B.M. Barua 1943, 408. 11 T.W. Rhys Davids 1900, 522, admirably commented upon by Kevin Trainor, 1997. A Nobel for the Pali Text Society ? 199 looks therefore as if it was written from a unique, uppermost viewpoint, with the vibrant voice of a strong will. As Oskar von Hinüber has emphasized, in Pali “looking down from a mountain is a topos”.12 Rhys Davids looked back from the many Pali Text Society achievements and gazed upon a Pali renaissance. And he added, “There is reasonable expectation that the work of the Pali Text Society will have an influence over greater Europe or Eastern Asia similar to that of the Renaissance scholars among ourselves.” Not only that the Renaissance can truly be manifold, but it can even be a shortage. Henceforth, successful renaissances certainly require accredited antiquities. And even the sanctioning by dint of the Nobel Prize of the Indian Buddhist antiquity, in its Pali attire, would suggest a finale, as the advancement of academic learning itself, Rhys Davids implies, has a, or has this mission : “The present opportunity of aiding the renaissance of another literature that may be of great importance to the progress of the world is almost certainly the last that can be open to any Academy.” Might have this truly been other than a “road not taken” ?13 The letdowns of the grander vistas uniting the “Oriental” Antiquity to the “Classical”, Greco-Roman one — incongruent alliance of a cultural space (derogatory) with a cultural time (dominant) — were as unremitting as persisted to be the attempts to reconstruct and integrate the whole religious and literary gamut from Magadha to the West. As Sylvain Lévi (1914 : 955) said in a “paper read on June 16, 1914” in London, “Notoriety in our little world begins with five or six people and has to stop before reaching one hundred”, moreover working sometimes “amidst laughter, contempt, and indifference”. One cannot indulge with impunity in counterfactual history, but these and other academic kilesas might have been ousted precisely by the responsiveness of the Nobel Committee (note 12 Oskar von Hinüber, 2006, 8, n. 22 (874, n. 22). 13 Charles Hallisey, 1995, with substantial discussions by J. W. de Jong, 1997, 170–71 ; Jan Nattier, 1997 ; and Janet Gyatso, 1998. Some other questions related more recently to the nascence of Buddhist studies are examined by Sven Bretfeld, 2012. 200 Eugen Ciurtin Rhys Davids also envisions “a special prize”). For the Sri Lankan Buddhists contemporary to Rhys Davids too, “it is this imagery of renaissance, not of reformation, that pervades the movement [of a new Buddhism] from its inception in the late nineteenth century to its culmination in the mid-twentieth century”.14 Thus, even unpublished, this demand clearly predates many of the uses of “Renaissance” comparisons in the world of Asian studies, and may be instructive for readers less aware of Edward Said’s indebtedness to Raymond Schwab’s La Renaissance orientale, or of Schwab himself to Edgar Quinet and ultimately towards the foundational awareness of Friedrich Schlegel’s Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier had precisely promoted a Begründung der Altert[h]umskunde, a program and subtitle already excised from the early French translation.15 Two centuries after Schlegel and one century after Rhys Davids, the fabric of a single Antiquity out of manifold fruitful Renaissances is still very far from being achieved and acknowledged. As one of the last autobiographical pieces from Rhys Davids’ own pen, these letters may be best read, I dare say, as a compact avowal of a life-long struggle ensuing from that firm resolve in his early years. Its aftermath – with or without the Nobel Prize – was uniform: as P.S. Jaini writes, “[t]he rest of his life is indeed the life of the Pali Text Society”.16 The letters edited here are in the Uppsala University Library archive collection of Nathan Söderblom (1866–1931). The letters are not included 14 H.L. Seneviratne, 1999, 26, a point stressed afresh by Ann M. Blackburn, 2010, 66 and 198–99, n. 2. On this sense of a Renaissance, see also Wickremeratne 1984, 165. 15 Adolphe Mazure includes a hefty “Introduction” (pp. v–li) and “Appendice” (pp. 299–379) in his translation. For a discussion of Schlegel’s Renaissance as propelled by Indian studies, see Chen Tzoref-Ashkenazi 2006, although less insightful than Wilhelm Halbfass 1988 (see especially pp. 73–101). 16 See P.S. Jaini, 1956, 387 (33), speaking moreover — precisely as Kellens did for Zarathuštra (n. 2) and implying the idea of revival/renaissance — of a fourth dharmacakra–pravartana. We may thus perceive the Nobel Commission becoming for the very first time — as Jaini puts it (1956, 382 (29)) – buddha-saṃjnī. A Nobel for the Pali Text Society ? 201 or referred to in the best correspondence collection of Söderblom (2006), where references to Buddhism seem moreover absent, as it had no prominent place in his work. Söderblom as historian of religions is best portrayed in Eric J. Sharpe (1990). Personally acquainted with Alfred Nobel as his priest in Paris, then elected Archbishop of Uppsala, he eventually received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1930, mainly for his grand ecumenical attempts in interwar Europe. Being closer to the Nobel family, Prize Commission, and cultural public life in Sweden, Swedish scholars were more than once solicited or instrumental in introducing potential candidates. This may well be connected to the (mostly) Iranologist Oscar Stig Wikander’s (1908–1983) own appeal for a Nobel Prize for literature for his colleague and friend Mircea Eliade (1907– 1986), a letter written to the Nobel Commission right before the 1968 events in Paris and Prague. More details in M. Timuș and E. Ciurtin (2000–2002). 202 Eugen Ciurtin I To the Secretary of the Nobel Commission of the Swedish Academy. [end of page] Pali Text Society, Cotterstock, Chipstead, Surrey. Oct. 1915 Sir, This Society was founded in 1881 for the publication of the standard literature of the early Buddhists, and of the Pali literature which has grown up in dependence on the standard books. The Society has published regularly since that date two, and occasionally, three volumes a year. Its total output up to the present date, December 1915, amounts to eighty volumes. Two of these books (short collections of poetry) had been previously published. All the rest are editiones principes. It would be quite unnecessary to dwell upon the importance of the influence of this literature of the early Buddhist thinkers and poets upon the history of the world. Originally put together during two centuries and a half, (say from 500 to 250 B.C.) it has profoundly modified the [2] thought of India. It has been in great degree the basis of such civilisation and intellectual life as has existed, during many centuries, in Tibet and Nepal, in China, and in Java and Bali in the Far Eastern Seas. The echoes of this mighty wave have lately penetrated to the West. From Schopenhauer17 to Huxley18 many of the most suggestive writers on the 17 Among the best recent overviews of Schopenhauer’s bond with (South) Asian literatures, see Lakshmi Kapani, 2002, including her lists of Buddhist Pali, Sanskrit, and Tibetan texts copiously read and discussed by him in translations (pp. 176–77, n. 45). 18 He might have been referring here to a noted book by “Darwin’s Bulldog” T.H. Huxley (1825–1895) (1894) (on Buddhism primarily pp. 60–69). Huxley’s A Nobel for the Pali Text Society ? 203 highest subjects of human enquiry have acknowledged their indebtedness to this early Buddhist literature. And an accurate knowledge of the poetry and the ethics, the philosophy, and the religion of the Buddhist literature must necessarily depend upon the work of the Society. For it is only in the books published by the Society that the actual words and the authentic evidence can be found. There is much loose and ignorant writing on this subject. All the authoritative and valuable books upon it, those for instance of Hermann Oldenberg and Edmund Hardy,19 quote the books of the Society on every page. So also my own works (of which a list is annexed) depend entirely for any literary, historical or philosophical value they may have, upon the work of this Society. It was fifty years ago, in the course of my duties as a magistrate in Ceylon, that I became acquainted with this literature, and I resolved that, if my life were [3] spared,20 I would get the whole of it edited and translated. Conscious however of my own limitations, I judged it necessary to find assistance, and founded accordingly in 1881 the Pali Text Society. The difficulties were at first very great. The number of MSS. available in Europe was small. The number of scholars, with sufficient enthusiasm to work at them, and with sufficient knowledge and skill to make their labours useful, was smaller still. There were no funds at all to pay for such labour, and insufficient funds to pay even for the printing. But by continual efforts, often thrown away, and long patience, these difficulties were overcome. MSS. were produced from the past ; scholars were induced to help, money was asked and sometimes received. The work slowly grew into a great international undertaking. European scholars came forward from among the Slavs and the readings of and on Buddhism are freshly commented upon by D.S. Lopez, Jr., 2008, 6–7, 22, 146. 19 For Hardy (1852–1904) Rhys Davids wrote an obituary notice (1905, 213– 15). 20 Comprehensive details of the worries Rhys Davids encountered in his youth are reconstructed by L.A. Wickremeratne, 1984. 204 Eugen Ciurtin Scandinavians, the Teutons, French and English ; and Eastern scholars in China and Japan, Burma, Siam and Ceylon gave such assistance as they could. Slowly but steadily the texts of the canon were published in the original Pali. That — the first stage of our work21 — is already completed. Three volumes only have still to appear. One of these is in press ; and the remaining two, after some years of preparation, are now nearly ready and will go to press shortly. When these [4] are published every scrap of this ancient literature now extant in the East, will have been rescued, and made available for use throughout the world. It still remains to publish translations of these texts. But the work thus already accomplished is in some respects unique. It may be best compared with that of the few scholars at the time of the Renaissance, who rescued and published the still surviving remains of Greek literature. Had they not done so how different would have been the subsequent history of thought, the religion, the literature, and the culture of Europe ! There is reasonable expectation that the work of the Pali Text Society will have an influence over the greater Europe of [or ?] Eastern Asia similar to that of the Renaissance scholars among ourselves. Curiously enough the main reason for the Greek literature on the one side and the Pali literature on the other, being forgotten, buried, nearly lost, was identically the same. That great migration of the nations in Central Asia which brought about the invasion of Europe by Goths, Vandals and Huns, led a little earlier to the invasion of India (since it was nearer to them) by hordes of barbarians. In both regions these invaders adopted the religion and the culture of the men they conquered — in India they became Buddhist, in Europe [5] they became Christians. In both cases there followed a long period of intellectual decline, and in the dark ages the ancient literature became neglected. 21 Under his chairmanship, the Pali Text Society eventually absorbed other British undertakings of similar value, as those of E.B. Cowell (1826–1903) and his “Pali guild”. See the many references to the Pali scholarship in Cambridge, including the six-volume translation of the Jātaka, as recounted by George Cowell, 1904, passim. A Nobel for the Pali Text Society ? 205 Other causes cooperated.22 But who can doubt but that the advent of these tribes, the succession of their leaders to the seats of pride and power, had also its share ? The conquerors were brave enough, and had virtues of their own. But they had little or no intellectual training ; their minds were steeped in foolish animistic notions ; they might think they were adopting the prevalent culture, but they were incapable of appreciating it, or of even understanding the literature of the golden age of the past.23 We know something of the result of the subsequent recovery of that literature in Europe. It is possible that the recovery of Pali records of the great intellectual and moral movement of the 6th and 5th centuries B.C. in India will have no similar influence among those who look back to it as the birthplace of their own literature and thought. The influence is already beginning to [24]. Buddhists of all schools (including those whose views have become as divergent from the views of the canon as Romanism from the New Testament) have welcomed the Society’s work ; and even my own Manual, based on the older authorities, has been translated in Japan for the use of the Japanese and Chinese. [6] The second stage of the Society’s aim — the translations — has now begun. Five volumes, of which copied are annexed, have already appeared, and others are in preparation. It is estimated that about 75 volumes more will be required, and that the approximate cost will be 22 See Rhys Davids’ Dialogues of the Buddha, Vol. I, pp. 141–43. 23 Such statements Rhys Davids made on other occasions too, here matching, for example, his more popular “Introduction” to Ernest Horrwitz, A Short History of Indian Literature (1907), p. xvii : “[W]hen the Tartar and Scythian hordes came in afterwards to ravage the highly-cultured districts of the North-West [of India], we have a whole series of events that resemble, in the most suggestive manner, the invasion by the Goths and Vandals of the highly-cultured Roman Empire. In each case, the vigorous but unlettered conquerors were intellectually conquered by their more cultured, if less warlike, foes.” 24 The text is unclear at this point. 206 Eugen Ciurtin £200 a volume. The Society has suffered severely through the war.25 Without fresh assistance its work can scarcely go on. To facilitate the translations the Society has started a Pali–English Dictionary, which will cost about £2,000 ; and other works, throwing light on the meaning of the canonical texts, will also be required. The aim of the Society is purely historical and literary. None of the European co-workers hold the views put forward in the canon.26 But we know that the literature already published will give the evidence on which can be based the reconstruction of one of the most interesting and important chapters in the history of human thought. And we expect that a literature which laid so much stress on freedom of thought, and on the most complete toleration of all other opinions ; which declares a philosophy bringing everything under the domain of law, and arguing back from each known effect to the cause or causes immediately behind ; an ethic based on law and evolution, and inculcating sympathy, self- 25 As the editors of the Journal wrote almost at the same time, “The Society has now entered on the testing stage of its power to stay during the present cataclysm, and so far is staying valiantly.” See “Report of the Society for the year 1915”, JPTS [7] 1915, pp. ix–xi (here xi). 26 This contrasts sharply with some views which present(ed) Rhys Davids as a (quasi-)Buddhist. However, he was unaware of or silenced the several Buddhistgoers cum Theosophist contributors to the Pali Text Society. One bold example is Frank Lee Woodward (1871–1952), whose various mergers of old and new meditation techniques, Theosophy, and Protestant Buddhism in the translation of the so-called Yogāvacara’s Manual (PTS 1916, thus coined and edited by Rhys Davids himself two decades before), made at the instigation of Anagārika Dharmapāla, had sturdy repercussions for understanding Theravāda, as revealed by R.F. Gombrich, first in 1983 (p. 26 : “an old book could appear more authentic than a living teacher”), then in 2006 (p. 189, regarding the anomaly “to learn meditation from a book without recourse to a master”). The problem was much furthered lately by Kate Crosby 1999, 503– 504, 539 n. 9 ; K. Crosby 2000, pp. 183–84, culminating in K. Crosby 2013. These forked avenues of research show a micro-sociology of the PTS fellows during Rhys Davids’ era is in want. A Nobel for the Pali Text Society ? 207 mastery and peace27 — we expect that such a [7] literature will be able, more especially in Asia [Asis, sic], to be a constant support to those high ideals so precious to the founder of the Nobel Trust. As it is within the power of the Academy to award the Nobel prize or a special prize to an institution or Society, I venture, for the above reasons, to ask that the claim of this Society, for its work in carrying out one of the most remarkable literary undertakings of the present generation,28 and more especially for the five volumes in English now submitted, may be sympathetically considered. How justly proud would be any Academy that could claim a share in the renaissance of the literature of Greece ! The present opportunity of aiding the renaissance of another literature that may be of great importance to the progress of the world is almost certainly the last that can be open to any Academy. T. W. Rhys Davids, Ph.D. ; LLD ; D.Sc. Fellow and member of the Council of the British Academy ; Foreign member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences. 27 This succinct yet intense portrayal of Buddhist literature, together with the newly arrived problem of the sympathy, adherence and conversion to Buddhism in the West, ignited many dissimilar opinions. For a typical blending of confidence and mockery in public discussions of Rhys Davids’ work, see for example a newspaper article by Chesterton in the Illustrated London News of October 10, 1908, reprinted in Chesterton 1987, 195–97. 28 As his Harvard colleague Charles Rockwell Lanman (1850–1941) wrote, he “devot[ed] 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 other scholars awoke to it”. See the letter to C.A.F. Rhys Davids, cited in her “Report of the Pali Text Society for 1922”, JPTS 7 (1920–1923), p. 27. 208 Eugen Ciurtin II29 Pali Text Society, Cotterstock, Chipstead, Surrey.30 Dear Sir, I enclose a copy of a letter written to the Nobel Commission for literature at Stockholm with the hope that – if the Commission should decide, once in a year, to make a grant to a society rather than to an individual — you would approve of the object of the letter. In that case would you be so kind as to give me your advice in the matter. I know nothing of the Commission or its methods, and at present no one knows of the letter except yourself and myself. Should the letter [2] be left to itself, or would it be right to ask31 such of the co-workers, editors or authors, who are entitled to write to the Commission, to do so ? I am afraid that during this horrible war it would be useless for me to write to any of my friends in Germany. The authors of the Society are 14 German, 13 English, 1 French, 15 Orientals, 4 American, 4 Danish, 1 Norwegian, and 1 Swiss.32 29 Letter II : October 1915, handwritten, 3 numbered pages. 30 On all the three pages : stamped addressed. Old stamped one — Harboro’s Grange,/Ashton-on-Mersey,/Manchester — deleted by being marked through by two lines. On the left side is another stamp : “Telegram : Rhys Davids, Sale”. 31 The underlining looks like Rhys Davids’. 32 All the names of the “co-workers” — a designation much favoured during the first decades of the Pali Text Society — are easily retrievable from the early volumes of JPTS, freely available at www.palitext.com. About (some of ) their labours, the best fresh panorama of Indian and Buddhist Studies in Europe before World War I is now the review article of (mostly Francophone) recent publications, by Rosane Rocher 2009. A Nobel for the Pali Text Society ? 209 I have not been able to discover whether any prize at [3] all was given in 1914 for Literature. The Society is certainly quite far removed from any side in the war, or rather it is equally on both sides.33 Believe me, Yours very sincerely, T.W. Rhys Davids WORKS CITED Barua, B.M. 1943. “Mrs. C.A.F. Rhys Davids”, IHQ 19, pp. 407–408. Blackburn, Ann M. 2010. Location of Buddhism: Colonialism & Modernity in Sri Lanka, Chicago-London : University of Chicago Press. Braun, Erik, and William Pruitt. 2012. “Two Letters from Ledi Sayadaw to Mrs Rhys Davids”, JPTS 31, pp. 155–81. Bretfeld, Sven. 2012. “Resonant Paradigms in the Study of Religions and the Emergence of Theravāda Buddhism”, Religion 42, pp. 273–97. Chesterton, G.K. 1987. The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, Vol. 27 : The Illustrated London News, 1908–1910, edited by Lawrence J. Clipper, San Francisco : Ignatius Press. Ciurtin, Eugen. 2010. “Histoire de l’indianisme et sa dissemination en Europe : Bibliographie des travaux récents (1990–2010)”, Studia Asiatica 11, pp. 215–71. Cowell, George. 1904. Life and Letters of Edward Byles Cowell. London : Macmillan. 33 Such apolitical stands, rather frequent at that time, should not prevent us from remembering Rhys Davids lost his own third child and only son, Arthur Percival Foley Rhys Davids (1897–1917), an ace fighter pilot of the Royal Flying Corps, in unclear circumstances during World War I. See Alex Revell, 2010, referring to then unpublished letters from Rhys Davids’ family papers in Cambridge and London, some unavailable to Wickremeratne (see n. 20). It is true that the “horrible war” had at times hidden consequences for the worldview of Pali philologists : more sensitive material from C.A.F. Rhys Davids’ papers kept in the University of London library is abstracted by Jeanette James and available at http://www.ulrls.lon.ac.uk/resources/ms1082. pdf (retrieved on April 8, 2014). 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