Richard Gombrich — Review

Buddhism and Pali

Richard Gombrich — Review

Buddhism and Pali

Surprisingly — and a delightful surprise it was — this book brought me closer to Gotama Buddha, the man — the pragmatist, the realist.

Richard Gombrich is Chair and founding Director of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies. From 1976 to 2004 he was Boden Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Oxford. He has been President of the Pali Text Society (1994–2002) and General Editor of the Clay Sanskrit Library.

Son of the eminent historian Ernst Gombrich, he studied at St Paul’s School in London before entering Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1957, with a scholarship in classics (Greek and Latin). He received his BA in Oriental Studies in 1961, his DPhil in 1970, and an AM in Sanskrit from Harvard in 1963.

The author of numerous articles and books, including How Buddhism Began (1996) and What The Buddha Thought (2013), Richard Gombrich is a leading authority on early Buddhism, and credited, among many other distinctions, with working out the dates of the Buddha’s life and death.

While Gombrich has spent much of his life studying Buddhism, he does not call himself a Buddhist but please do not let that dissuade you. In fact, it is sometimes refreshing to find a view a step or two exterior to the doctrine and practice — like Sue Hamilton’s; it makes, I believe, for a more honest approach since there is no faith or belief to justify or defend, no loyalty to The Buddha to uphold as it were. I am not saying that Buddhists writers (Bhikkhu Bodhi would be a nice example) are in any way dishonest, but there is, as I said, always the “loyalty” factor.

To quote Mr. Gombrich from the preface to this little gem: “I began one of my books by writing that I consider the Buddha to be one of the greatest thinkers — and greatest personalities — of whom we have record in human history: ‘I think that his ideas should form part of the education of every child, the world over, and that this would help to make the world a more civilized place, both gentler and more intelligent.’ And the best source for his ideas is the texts of the Pali Canon.

“After summarizing the history of Pali (Chapter 1), this book explains the main features of its grammar (Chapter 2) and of its style as it appears in the Buddha’s sermons (Chapter 3). The Canon’s content is ascribed by tradition to the Buddha himself, and the question uppermost in the minds of many readers may well be how far to trust that ascription. As I explain at the beginning of Chapter 1, a recent book by two Buddhist monks argues for the unfashionable position that basically the ascription is correct. In Chapter 4 I go even further and argue that the Buddha was probably responsible not only for the content of much of the Canon, but even for the language in which it is expressed. Finally, the Epilogue considers how Pali can have a brighter future.”

My aim in reading this book was not to learn Pali but to discover what role Pali played both in forming the Buddha Dharma and then, later, in recording it for posterity once Gotama’s teachings were committed to writing in the 1st Century BCE. Gombrich answers both questions admirably.

And an additional delight: Gombrich’s style is warm and close and clear: a true pleasure to read.

I’m quite convinced that once you’ve read it, you’ll put the book down feeling that you now know Gotama a little (if not much) better; you know how he ensured the survival of his teachings; you know how seriously he took his mission; you know, now, how trustworthy Gotama Buddha is, and that is an amazing gift to receive through a simple book on Buddhism and Pali.

P.S. Here is a link to an interview with Richard Gombrich which you might find very interesting and enjoy: https://tricycle.org/magazine/what-buddha-thought/.

© Wolfstuff