A Mannual of Buddhism for Advanced Students

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EIGHTEEN years after Spence Hardy had published his Manual of Budhism [sic], mainly a translation from late Sinhalese sources, the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge published, as the first of their Non-Christian Religious Systems, a Manual of Buddhism by Rhys Davids. This was fifty-four years ago, and the book has been reprinted twenty-three times and yet lives. It has wrought a most useful work, first, by diffusing knowledge about the history of a great and long-lived institution; secondly, by at least checking, in its historical sobriety, the growth of erratic impulses, arising out of a very little learning about that institution and materializing in much well-meant but misleading assertion.

Rhys Davids believed in viewing a subject historically. A religion, he would have said, is not a ready-made, reach-me- down set of notions and conduct, evolved, with no past and no change, from the inner being of any one man, however great. That this is not fully grasped is evident from the many writings on what we have lately come to call "Buddhism," which have appeared in spite of the example set by his book. Yet but for that example, who can say how many more, how much worse we might have seen! That his Manual has not been an even stronger check may be because he was himself unable to profit more by all the materials that, mainly through his scheme of purveying, have followed on the appearance of his Manual.

This scheme was the completion of the issue in roman letter of editions, together with a Dictionary and Translations, of the oldest literature of Buddhism which has yet been found: the Pali Canon and affiliated literature.

Printing exigencies made it impossible for him to rewrite or even recast any of his book, and ruefully does he write, in a Preface to a later reprint, of the growing need for rewriting it. Compared with most of our special sciences, the study of Buddhist sources is very new. A scientific manual is superannuated in a decade, even though the science date from a couple of centuries back. Equally and more so is a Buddhist manual superannuated after fifty four years? Had it been possible for Rhys Davids, with youth renewed in place of a suffering old age, to have set about the recast of his own views, rendered possible through his own persistent labours, the present work had been less needed. If I say "less" rather than "not," that is only because he is he, and I am I.

Nor do I claim to have in every way reproduced all the kind of information that is packed into his Manual. In the first place, it is now less needed. So much more is now accessible to the reader that it is rather guidance in his reaching than a substitute for his reading that is needed.

**Contents and Sample Pages**