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Caroline Rhys Davids Biography
Caroline Augusta Foley was born on 27 September 1857 in Wadhurst, East Sussex, England to John Foley and Caroline Elizabeth Foley (née Windham).
She was born into a family with a long ecclesiastic history: her father, John Foley, served as the vicar of Wadhurst from 1847–88; her grandfather and great grandfather had served as rector of Holt, Worcestershire and vicar of Mordiford, Herefordshire, respectively.
Two years before her birth, five of her siblings died within one month in December 1855/January 1856 from diphtheria. One surviving brother, John Windham Foley (1848–1926), became a missionary in India and another, Charles Windham Foley (1856–1933), played in three Football Association Cup Finals for Old Etonians; he later had a career as a solicitor.
Caroline was home schooled by her father and then attended University College, London studying philosophy, psychology, and economics (PPE). She completed her BA in 1886 and an MA in philosophy in 1889.
During her time at University College, she won both the John Stuart Mill Scholarship and the Joseph Hume Scholarship. It was her psychology tutor George Croom Robertson who sent her to Professor Rhys Davids, her future husband, to further her interest in Indian philosophy. She also studied Sanskrit and Indian Philosophy with Reinhold Rost.
As a student, she was already a prolific writer and a vocal campaigner in the movements for poverty relief, children's rights, and women’s right to vote.
Before moving into Buddhist studies, Rhys Davids contributed to Economics. She wrote seventeen entries for Palgrave Dictionary of Political Economy (1894-99/1910), including "Rent of ability," "Science, Economic, as distinguished from art," "Statics, Social, and social dynamics," as well as twelve biographical entries. Her entry, "Fashion, economic influence of," was related to her 1893 Economic Journal article, "Fashion," and reflects an unusual economic interest.
She also translated articles for the Economic journal from the German, French and Italian, including Carl Menger's influential 1892 article "On the Origin of Money". In 1896 Rhys Davids published two sets of lecture notes by her former teacher and mentor George Croom Robertson: one on psychology and one on philosophy. Rhys Davids was on the editorial board of the Economic Journal from 1891 to 1895.
Thomas William Rhys Davids encouraged, his then student, Caroline to pursue Buddhist studies and do research about Buddhist psychology and the place of women in Buddhism.
Thus, among her first works were a translation of the Dhammasaṅgani, a text from the Theravāda Abhidhamma Piṭaka, which she published under the title “A Buddhist manual of psychological ethics: Being a translation, now made for the first time, from the original Pāli, of the first book in the Abhidhamma Piṭaka, entitled: Dhamma-sangaṇi (Compendium of States or Phenomena) (1900);” a second early translation was that of the Therīgāthā, a canonical work of verses traditionally ascribed to early Buddhist nuns (under the title Psalms of the Sisters [1909]). She also translated Aṅguttara Nikāya, Saṁyutta Nikāya and Milinda Paṇha a post-canonical text.
She also worked as co-author of Kathāvatthu 1 with Shwe Zan Aung.
Caroline Augusta Foley married Thomas William Rhys Davids in 1894. They had three children: Vivien Brynhild Caroline Foley Rhys Davids (1895-1978), Arthur Rhys Davids (1897-1917), and Nesta Enid (1900-1973).2
Caroline Rhys Davids was awarded an honorary D.Litt. degree by the Victoria University of Manchester (today University of Manchester) in 1919.
Rhys Davids held two academic positions: Lecturer in Indian Philosophy at Victoria University of Manchester (1910-1913) and Lecturer in the History of Buddhism at the School of Oriental Studies, later renamed the School of Oriental and African Studies (1918-1933).
While teaching, she simultaneously acted as the Honorary Secretary of the Pāli Text Society (PTS) which had been started by T. W. Rhys Davids to transcribe and translate Pāli Buddhist texts in 1881. She held that position from 1907 until her husband's death in 1922; the following year, she took his place as President of the Society.
Caroline Rhys Davids was one of the first scholars to translate Abhidhamma texts, known for their complexity and difficult use of technical language. She also translated large portions of the Sutta Piṭaka or edited and supervised the translations of other PTS scholars. Beyond this, she also wrote numerous articles and popular books on Buddhism; it is in these manuals and journal articles where her controversial volte-face towards several key points of Theravāda doctrine can first be seen.
After the death of her son in 1917 and her husband in 1922, Rhys Davids turned to Spiritualism. She became particularly involved in various forms of psychic communication with the dead, first attempting to reach her dead son through seances and then through automatic writing.
She later claimed to have developed clairaudience, as well as the ability to pass into the next world when dreaming. She kept extensive notebooks of automatic writing, along with notes on the afterlife and diaries detailing her experiences. These notes form part of her archive jointly held by the University of Cambridge and the University of London.
Although earlier in her career she accepted more mainstream beliefs about Buddhist teachings, later in life she rejected the concept of anatta as an "original" Buddhist teaching. She appears to have influenced several of her students in this direction, including A. K. Coomaraswamy, F. L. Woodward, and I. B. Horner.
Rhys Davids died suddenly in Chipstead, Surrey on 26 June 1942. She was 84.
Works (alphabetical order)
• A Buddhist Manual of Psychological Ethics of the Fourth Century B.C., London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1900
• A Buddhist manual of psychological ethics, London, The Royal Asiatic Society, 1923
• A Manual of Buddhism for Advanced Students, 1932
• Buddhism: a Study of the Buddhist Norm, London, 1912
• Buddhist Psychology: An Inquiry Into the Analysis and Theory of Mind in Pali Literature, London, 1914
• Compendium of Philosophy: Travel of Abhidhammattha Sangaha, London, 1910
• Dialogues of the Buddha, Oxford, 1899
• Dukapaṭṭhāna, vol. I, being part of the Abhidhamma Piṭaka, London, Pali Text Society, 1906
• Elements of general philosophy, New York, 1896
• Elements of general philosophy, London, 1896
• Gotama the Man, 1928
• Indian Religion and Survival: A Study, 1934
• Kant on education (Ueber Pädagogik), London, 1899
• Kindred Sayings on Buddhism, 1930
• Manual of a mystic; being a translation from the Pali and Sinhalese work entitled The Yogāvachara's manual, London, Pali Text Society, 1916
• More about the Hereafter, 1939
• Old creeds and new needs, London, 1923
• Outlines of Buddhism: A Historical Sketch, 1934
• Psalms of the early Buddhists, the Pali Text Society, 1909
• Psalms of the Sisters, London, Pali Text Society, 1909
• Sakya: or, Buddhist Origins, 1928
• Stories of the Buddha: Being Selections from the Jataka, 1929
• The Aṅguttara-nikāya, London, The Pali Text Society
• The Birth of Indian Psychology and its Development in Buddhism, 1936
• The expositor (Atthasālinī) Buddaghosa's commentary on the Dhammasangaṇī, the first book of the Abhidhamma Piṭaka, London, Pali Text Society, 1920
• The Milinda-questions: An Inquiry into its Place in the History of Buddhism with a Theory as to its Author, 1930
• The Saṃyutta-Nikâya of the Sutta-piṭaka, London, 1904
• The Vibhaṅga, being the second book of the Abhidhamma piṭaka, London, the Pali Text Society, 1904
• The Visuddhi-Magga of Buddhaghosa, London, The Pali Text Society, 1920
• The Will to Peace, London, 1923
• The Visuddhi-Magga of Buddhaghosa, London, The Pali Text Society, 1920
• The Yamaka, being the sixth book of the Abhidhamma-Piṭaka, London, 1911
• To Become or not to Become (That is the Question!): Episodes in the History of an Indian Word, 1937
• What was the original gospel in Buddhism?, 1938
• Will & Willer (1926); What is your Will, 1937 (A rewrite of Will & Willer)
Footnotes
1. Kathāvatthu (Pāli) (abbrev. Kv, Kvu), translated as "Points of Controversy", is a Buddhist scripture, one of the seven books in the Theravada Abhidhamma Pitaka.
2. Vivien won the Clara Evelyn Mordan Scholarship to St Hugh's College, Oxford in 1915, later serving as a Surrey County Councillor, and receiving an MBE in 1973. Arthur was a gifted scholar and a decorated World War I fighter ace, but was killed in action in 1917. Neither Vivien nor Nesta married or had children.
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