With an industry which is as great as it is
commendable, Mrs. Rhys Davids is reconstructing the original message of Buddhism, thereby continuing the devoted labours of Dr. Rhys Davids, who founded the Pali Text Society in 1881. In Sakya, or Buddhist Origins (Kegan Paul, 125. 6d.) she endeavours to trace what were the central and ancillary messages of Sukya-memi (as Buddha was and still is known in India) and how that doctrine was overlaid by later accre- tions. She has a valuable chapter on Buddhist as compared with Vedantic meditation (dhyana) which she rather oddly calls "musing," and others of interest to Eastern students on primitive Buddhism. But the work is disappointing to a reader who knows Mrs. Rhys Davids erudition and literary craftsmanship. The truth is that she has sacrificed clarity to textual trifles ; she might have told us much more, and told it much more clearly in these 437 closely compacted pages if she had given us less exegesis and more narrative.
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