The Pali Literature of Burma – Mabel Haynes Bode
‘Our purpose is not to describe again the outward aspect of the temple, the monastery, and the village, very vividly presented to Western readers by learned and sympathetic writers from Bishop Bigandet onwards. So many Europeans have come under the charm of Burma – of the Burmese people, their life and religion – that there is no need to do more than recall to readers the names of the writers who have made that charm a familiar thing to us. We have chosen for our study the less well-known subject of the Pali Books of Burma. The authors were the ancestors and masters of the monks to-day, through whom we know those old-time scholars and can still see, as it were, a far-off picture of their lives, their schools, and their work.’
Mabel Haynes Bode
The Pali Literature of Burma
The Royal Asiatic Society, 1909
Mabel Haynes Bode (1864–1922) was one of the first women to enter the academic fields of Pāli, Sanskrit and Buddhist studies. She lectured in Pāli and Sanskrit, made an edition of the Pāli text Sāsanavaṃsa, and helped with the English translation, from German, of the Mahāvaṃsa. She specialised in the Pāli literature of Burma, about which she wrote the book above, published in 1909, by The Royal Asiatic Society.
Further Reading:
Sāsanavamsa – Mabel Haynes Bode, Pali Text Society, 1897
Mahāvamsa (The Great Chronicle of Ceylon)
Translated by Willhelm Geiger (Assisted by Mabel Haynes Bode), Pali Text Society, 1912
I. P. Minayeff, 1894 (French – Translated from the Russian by R.H. Assier de Pompignan)
Emmanuel Forchhammer, 1891 (Report on the antiquities of Arakan (western Burma))
The Life, Or Legend of Gaudama, The Budha of The Burmese
Rev. P. Bigandet, American Mission Press, 1866
The Origin of the Buddhavarsha – J. F. Fleet, Journal of The Royal Asiatic Society, 1909
The Day on which Buddha Died – J. F. Fleet, Journal of The Royal Asiatic Society, 1909
T’Oung Pao (Vol. VI) – Henri Cordier, Gustave Schlegel, 1895
The Bamboo Sea 
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