Hi Morley,

You must a relative of the illustrious Robert C Chalmers.

As regards Nyanatiloka, you might like to try the German edition of Wiki:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyanatiloka

Perhaps you might get some lead from there.

Piya Tan (Singapore)

On Jan 8, 2008 5:32 AM, morley.chalmers <morley@...> wrote:

> This should be of particular interest to those interested in the Pali
> language. Nyanatiloka
> was one of the earliest translators of the Pali texts into German and was
> instrumental in
> Theravada's rebirth in a number of aspects.
>
> I've been asked by BPS (Buddhist Publication Society in Sri Lanka) to
> gather up more
> information about Nyanatiloka, the great teacher who came to British
> Ceylon in the first
> decade of the last century, took ordination, the first continental
> European to do so, and
> founded the Island Hermitage in Ceylon as a place for non-Asian seekers.
>
> He lived a long life and had a profound effect on bringing the Theravada
> teachings of the
> Buddha to the attention of the modern world. His students founded BPS.
> Both the Island
> Hermitage and BPS continue to this day. Nyanatiloka's dates are 1878-1957.
> Strangely
> there's no profile on him on Wikipedia, and the very thinnest of profiles
> on Nyanaponika
> one of Nyanatiloka's major students and a co-founder of BPS.
>
> We're looking for two kinds of help.
>
> 1. First, we're looking for details on Nyanatiloka's life from the time he
> was interned by the
> British as an enemy alien at the start of the Second World War in 1939,
> right through to
> Nyanatiloka's death in 1957. Oddly, we have lots of rich detail on the
> first three-quarters
> of Nyanatiloka's life, much of it from his own hand, but barely anything
> from the period of
> the writing of the great Buddhist Dictionary and Nyanaponika's hand in
> encouraging the
> founding of BPS, and everything in between.
>
> We're looking for pointers, both on the web and off, snippets, photos,
> whatever. If
> anything gets published we'll ask explicit permission prior to use. Right
> now we're on the
> hunt for what's available. We're open to additional material from 1878 to
> 1939, but that
> period is already rich in detail.
>
> 2. Second, we're looking for assessments on Nyanatiloka's life and his
> affect on the
> birthing of Theravada Buddhism beyond southeast Asia. While most
> individuals who knew
> Nyanatiloka personally are now themselves gone, we're looking for both
> contemporary and
> past writers commentaries on this quite remarkable figure. Again, we'll
> ask for explicit
> permission to publish prior to use. Right now, we're looking for what's
> available.
>
> If you can help in either of these two objects, please respond to this
> posting here and we'll
> make further contact. Let's use the internet to recover this corner of our
> collective past.
>
> With metta,
>
>
>



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