Text Documents And Extracts Chiefly From Manuscripts in Bodleian Vol 01 Part 05

SR No.: 020820
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Max Muller, H Wenzel
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1885
Total Pages: 107
Language: English, Sanskrit
Classification: Book_English & Book_Devnagari
File Size: 8 MB

Page 7

PREFACE.
THIS edition of the text of the Dharma-samgraha, with notes and indices, will, I hope, serve as a lasting monument of a most conscientious, laborious, and amiable Buddhist priest, Kenjiu Kasawara, who arrived in England in 1876, became my pupil in Sanskrit from 1879-82, and died shortly after his return to his native country, in 1883.
I have given an account of him and his fellow-student, Bunyiu Nanjio, in my Biographical Essays' (Longmans, 1884), and I shall here quote a few lines only, in order to enable Sanskrit scholars, who may not have read these Essays, to form some idea of what this promising young student was. "Kasawara's life at Oxford was very monotonous. He allowed himself no pleasures of any kind, and took little exercise. He did not smoke, or drink, or read novels or newspapers. He worked on day after day, often for weeks seeing no one and talking to no one but to me and his fellow-worker, Bunyiu Nanjio. He spoke and wrote English correctly, he learnt some Latin, also a little French, and studied some of the classical English books on history and philosophy. He might have become a most useful man after his return to Japan, for he was not only able to appreciate all that was good in European civilisation, but retained a certain national pride, and would never have become a mere imitator of the West. His manners were perfect-they were the natural manners of an unselfish man. As to his character, all I can say is that, though I watched him for a long time, I never found any guile in him, and I doubt whether, during the last four years, Oxford possessed a purer and nobler soul among her students than this poor Buddhist priest. Buddhism may indeed be proud of such a man. During the last year of his stay at Oxford I observed signs of depression in him, though he never complained. I persuaded him to see a doctor, and the doctor at once declared that my young friend was in an advanced stage of consumption, and advised him to go home. He never flinched, and I still hear the quiet tone in which
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