The Pali Text Society was founded in 1881 by T.W. Rhys Davids "to foster and promote the study of Pali
texts".
Pali is the language in which the texts of the Theravada school of Buddhism is preserved. The Pali texts are the oldest collection of Buddhist scriptures preserved in the
language in which they were written down.
The society first compiled, edited, and published Roman script versions of a large
corpus of Pali literature, including the Pali Canon, as well as commentarial,
exegetical texts, and histories. It publishes translations of many Pali texts. It also
publishes ancillary works including dictionaries, concordances, books for students of Pali and a journal.
History
T. W. Rhys Davids was one of three British civil servants who were posted
to Sri Lanka, in the 19th century, the others being
George Turnour, and Robert Caesar Childers
(1838-1876). At this time Buddhism in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) was struggling under the weight of foreign rule and intense
missionary activity by Christians. It was an administrative requirement that all civil
servants should be familiar with the language, literature, and culture of the land in which they were posted, so the three men
studied with several scholar monks where, along with an introduction to Sinhala culture and language, they became interested in
Buddhism.
The Pali Text Society was founded on the model of the Early English Text
Society with Rhys Davids counting on support from a lot of European scholars and Sri Lankan scholar monks. The work of
bringing out the Roman text editions of the Pali Canon was not financially rewarding, but was achieved with the backing of the
Buddhist clergy in Sri Lanka who underwrote the printing costs.
Childers published the first Pali-English dictionary in 1874. This was superseded in 1925 by the
new Dictionary which had largely been compiled by T. W. Rhys Davids over 40 years, but was finished by his student William Stede. Currently another dictionary is being compiled by Margaret
Cone, with the first of three volumes (A - Kh) published in 2001.
By 1922, when T. W. Rhys Davids died, the Pali Text Society had issued 64 separate texts in 94 volumes extending over
26,000 pages, as well a range of articles by English and European scholars.
Fragile Palm Leaves
In 1994, the Pali Text Society inaugurated the Fragile Palm Leaves project, an attempt to catalogue and preserve Buddhist
palm-leaf manuscripts from Southeast Asia. Prior to the introduction of printing presses and Western paper-making technology,
texts in Southeast Asia- including the Pali scriptures- were preserved by inscribing writing into specially preserved leaves from
palm trees. The leaves were then bound together to create a complete manuscript.
While palm-leaf manuscripts have likely been in use since before the 5th Century CE[1], existing examples date from the 18th Century and later, with the largest number
having been created during the 19th Century.[2] Because of
the materials used and the tropical climate, manuscripts from earlier eras are generally not found intact in palm-leaf form, and
many manuscripts have been badly damaged. During the colonial era, many palm-leaf manuscripts were disassembled and destroyed,
with individual pages of texts being sold as decorative objets d'art to Western collectors.
The Pali Text Society created the Fragile Palm Leaves project to collect, catalogue, and preserve these artifacts, including
scanning them into electronic formats in order to make them available to researchers without threatening their preservation. In
2001, the project was formalised as a non-profit foundation in Thailand as the Fragile Palm Leaves Foundation.
Significant members of the Pali Text society
Publications
As of 2006, the list of Pali texts translated by the society is, in their English titles,:
- Apocryphal Birth Stories (2 volumes)
- The Birth Stories of the Ten Bodhisattas
- The Book of Analysis
- The Book of the Discipline (6 volumes)
- The Book of the Gradual Sayings (5 volumes)
- The Book of the Kindred Sayings (5 volumes)
- Buddhaghosuppatti
- The Buddha's Last Days: Buddhaghosa's Commentary on the Mahaaparinibbaana
- Buddhist Legends, a commentery on the Dhammapada (3 volumes)
- Buddhist Psychological Ethics
- The Casket of Medicine
- The Clarifier of the Sweet Meaning
- The Commentary on the Verses of the Theriis
- Compendium of Philosophy
- Conditional Relations (2 volumes)
- Connected Discourses of the Buddha (2 volumes)
- Cuulavamsa Translation
- Darlegung der Bedeutung (only available in German)
- The Debates Commentary
- A Designation of Human Types
- Dialogues of the Buddha (3 volumes)
- Diipavamsa*
- Discourse on Elements
- Dispeller of Delusion (2 volumes)
- Elders' Verses (2 volumes)
- Epochs of the Conqueror
- The Expositor
- Further Dialogues of the Buddha
- The Great Chronicle of Ceylon
- The Group of Discourses
- The Guide
- The Inception of Discipline
- In Praise of Mount Samanta
- The Itivuttaka
- The Jaataka or Stories of the Buddha's Former Births (6 volumes)
- Jinaalankaara*
- Kunaala-Jaataka*
- Mahaavastu (3 volumes, from Sanskrit)
- Manual of a Mystic
- The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha
- Middle Length Sayings (3 volumes)
- Milinda's Questions (2 volumes)
- Minor Anthologies (4 volumes, contains many sshort Pali texts like Dhammapada)
- The Minor Readings and The Illustrator of Ultimate Meaning
- The Path of Discrimination
- The Path of Purity
- Paatimokkha*
- Peta Stories
- Pitaka Disclosure
- Points of Controversy
- Psalms of the Early Buddhists
- Stances des Theri
- The Summary of the Topics of Abhidhamma and Exposition of the Topics of Abhidhamma,
- The Suutra of Golden Light (from Sanskrit)
- Thuupavamsa*
- The Teaching of Vimalakiirti (from Tibetan)
- The Udaana
- Udaana Commentary (2 volumes)
- Vimaana Stories
- Vinaya-pi.taka Commentary, Samantapaasaadikaa Baahiranidaana
- Word of the Doctrine (Dhammapada)
These are the titles in English, although the society also produce them in Pali. Some English versions are also available in
paperback, and so have a different title. The society publishes a few scriptures from Sanskrit and Tibetan, although these are
only available in English.
*Indicates texts where English translations and Pali text have been combined in a single volume.
References
External links
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