Pali Text Society

The Pali Text Society is a registered charity in the United Kingdom, whose purpose is "to foster and promote the study of Pali texts". It is the principal Western publisher in the field. Pali is the traditional language of Theravada Buddhism, and the most important Pali texts are those constituting the Pali Canon. The narrative here is for convenience divided up into the "reigns" of the successive presidents of the Society.

T. W. Rhys Davids (1881-1922)

Thomas William Rhys Davids was born in England of Welsh descent. In his personal life he used Rhys as his first name and Davids as his surname, but professionally he treated Rhys Davids as a compound surname alphabetized under R. He first came across Pali as a civil servant posted to Ceylon (Sri Lanka). After a brief period as a lawyer he went into an academic career, becoming Professor of Pali at London and then Professor of Comparative Religion at Manchester. He founded the PTS in 1881, assisted by German scholar Hermann Oldenberg. For its first few years the Society operated as a "book club": you paid your subscription and received copies of whatever the Society published. In addition to subscriptions the Society received donations, the list headed by £200 from the King of Siam (Thailand). After a few years books started being published more normally, but not by the Society; rather, they were published "for the Pali Text Society by" different publishers over the years. PTS became its own publisher only much later (see below). A text series and a Journal both started in 1882.

TBC