Eighteen years after Spence Hardy had published his Manual of Buddhism [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.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Rhys Davids
Mrs. Rhys Davids (27 September 1857-26 June 1942), a well-known authority on Buddhism, undertook the difficult task of translating from original Pali a number of Buddhist works which justifiably earned her a place among the foremost scholars of Buddhism. She was a pupil of Prof. T.W. Rhys Davids whom she later married. Besides her translation of the Dhamma-Sangani under the title of A Buddhist Manual of Psychological Ethics, she undertook the translation and interpretation of a number of works on Abhidhamma. As the editor of the Pali Text Society, a number of other works were published under her guidance. She was also the author of a number of books and articles : The more well-known are : Buddhist Psychology, translation of Thera-Therigatha in English verse entitled Psalms of the Early Buddhist Brothers and Sisters, and The Wayfarers' Words (in three Vols.) and What was the Original Gospel in Buddhism?
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