Buddhist Stories

Back of the Book (May 12, 1843 - December 27, 1922) was a British scholar of the Pali language and founder of the Pali Text Society.

Thomas William Rhys Davids was born in Colchester, the eldest son of a Welsh Congregational minister who was affectionately referred to as the Bishop of Essex. His mother, who died at the age of 37 following childbirth; had run the Sunday school attached to his father's church.

T. W. Rhys Davids was well educated in Latin at school. Deciding on the Civil Service, he studied Sanskrit under A.F. Stenzler (a distinguished scholar at the University of Breslau, Germany, from 1833 till 1868). There, he earned money by teaching English. He returned to England in 1863 and, passing his civil service exams, he was posted to Ceylon. As Magistrate of Galle, a case was brought before Rhys Davids involving questions of ecclesiastical law, and he first came across Pali when a document in a strange language was brought up as evidence.

In 1871 he was posted as Assistant Government Agent of Nuwarakalaviya of which Anuradhapura was the administrative centre, where the Governor was Sir Hercules Robinson. Robinson founded the Archaeological Commission in 1868.

Rhys Davids became involved with the excavation of the ancient Sinhalese city of Anuradhapura, which had been abandoned after an invasion in 993. He began to collect inscriptions and manuscripts, and from 1870-1872 wrote a series of articles for the Ceylon branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Journal about them. During this time Rhys Davids learned the local language and spent time with the people of the area.

Preface MOST of these stories have appeared in The Young Citizen and The Adyar Bulletin during the last few years, and I am grateful to the editors of those magazines for permission to reprint them in book form. The greater part are translated from The Commentary on the Dhammapada, a large collection of stories illustrative of those moral verses of Buddhism : but some are to be found also in the earlier commentaries ascribed to Buddhaghosa. A few are from the Canonical Books themselves and are familiar to all Buddhists, while one or two are from the large collection of Ritc-ika or Birth Tales. I believe I have made a choice of the best short stories in Buddhist literature. As a rule these illustrative tales are long and involved, tale within tale : but in the case of those presented here, the point is not lost by overwrapping, and they give us a fair know-ledge of Buddhist Ethics as they were regarded by pious devotees of two thousand years ago. No story is later than about A.D. 500, the period assigned to Buddhaghosa and Dhammapada.

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