HENRY CLARKE WARREN
(1854-1899)
OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, U. S. A.
A Brief Memorial
By C. R. LANMAN
The issue of the thirtieth volume of the Harvard Oriental Series is a fitting occasion for a short account of the life and character of Henry Warren, one of the two joint-founders of the Series; and the pages which follow the end of this volume proper, are a fit place in which to print the account by way of permanent record.
Henry Warren is worthy to be remembered, other reasons apart, for two things. He was the first American scholar (even now, after thirty years, unsurpassed) to attain distinction for his mastery of the sacred scriptures of Buddhism, a distinction now become world-wide. And again, with ample wealth he combined the learning and insight and faith to forecast the potential usefulness of such an undertaking as this Series, and did in fact give to Harvard University the funds for its publication. What these two things signify, — this may be told in the sequel.
Henry Clarke Warren was born in Boston, Massachusetts, November 18, 1854, and died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Tuesday, January 3, 1899. His family was of English stock that came to New England between 1630 and 1640. His father was Samuel Dennis Warren (1817-1888), and his mother's maiden name was Susan Cornelia Clarke. In his early childhood, a fall from a chaise produced an injury of utmost gravity. It resulted in a spinal ailment and in lifelong physical disability and suffering. This was all the more a loss to the world, because his intellectual endowments were of a very high order, and governed by a moral character which — by due inheritance from his father and mother[1] — was uncommonly elevated and unselfish and strong. Shut out by his crippled body from many of the joys of boyhood and young manhood, he bravely set himself to make the most of what remained to him.
Henry Warren received careful private instruction and the advantages of travel (journeys to Europe and Egypt); and his native broadness of mind soon showed itself in a catholicity of interest very unusual for one of his years. In Harvard College he won the affectionate regard of his teacher, Professor George Herbert Palmer, by his keen interest in the history of philosophy. He became an intelligent student of Plato and Kant, and the natural trend of his mind towards speculative questions showed clearly in his later scientific investigations of Buddhism. With all this went an eager curiosity about the visible world around him. We can easily believe that he would have attained to distinction in natural science, so good were his gifts of observation and well-balanced reflection upon what he saw. He used his microscope with great satisfaction in botanical study. At Baltimore he worked with enthusiasm in the chemical laboratory. And through all his later years, an aquarium was a thing which he maintained with intelligent and persistent interest. But for the most part he was forced, reluctantly, we may guess, to see with the eyes of others; and accordingly his reading in the natural sciences — in those just mentioned, in physiology and kindred subjects ancillary to medicine, and in geography — was wide, and was for him a well-chosen foil to the severer Oriental studies which became his unprofessed profession. As a further resource for diversion in hours of weariness or solitude, he took to books of travel and of fiction; and by way of zest, acceptable to so active a mind, he read them, one in German, another in Dutch, and another in French or Spanish or Russian.
The field of science, however, in which he made a name for himself is Oriental philosophy, and in particular, Buddhism, conceived, not as a simple body of ethical teaching, but as an elaborate system of doctrine. He had begun the study of Sanskrit, as an undergraduate at Harvard, with Professor Greenough; and, after taking his bachelor's degree in 1879, had continued the study at the newly established Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, first under Professor Lanman, and then, after Lanman had been called (in 1880) to Harvard, with Lanman's pupil and successor, Professor Bloomfield. In 1884 Warren returned to the home of his father in Boston. In May, 1884, he went to England for a stay of a few weeks, partly to visit his brother Edward at Oxford, and partly to meet the Pāḷi scholar whose influence on the course of his future studies proved to be so large, Professor Rhys Davids. On the death of his father in 1888, he made trial of the climate of Southern California, but soon came home. In September, 1891, he established his residence at Cambridge, in a beautiful place on Quincy Street, opposite Harvard College Yard and near the Library, in what had been the dwelling of Professor Beck; and there he lived for the rest of his days.
Warren was elected a member of the American Oriental Society in 1882; and ten years later he was chosen Treasurer, relieving Lanman, who was then serving as Corresponding Secretary and as Treasurer. This office he held till his death, doing its duties with scrupulous care until the end.[2] Thus, either as productive worker or as a Director or as both, he was for almost two decades an interested and active member, one of the kind that really promote the fundamental objects of such an organization. He was glad to be made a member of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland.[3] His name is on the first list of members of the Pāḷi Text Society of London, among the "Subscribers for six years;" and later it appears (for such was the usage of the Report) among those of the "Donors" as one of the most generous givers.[4] Even this slight publicity was doubtless unwelcome; for, constant as were his gifts to causes that proved themselves worthy, he was more than unostentatious. For the most valuable single object in the Harvard Semitic Museum, a perfectly preserved Assyrian tablet, half of the purchase-money came as a wholly unsolicited gift from Warren.
As a citizen, whether of the municipality or of the Commonwealth, he was ever ready to do his share in works of enlightened organized charity, or to help, for example, in the preservation of our forests or in the reform of the civil service. His public-spirited action was as modest as it was zealous. The maxim of the misprized Epicurus he had taken to heart, "Well hid is well lived," λάθε βιώσας.
Warren's bodily afflictions tended to make him of shy and retiring habit. But the few who knew him well, knew him as a man of strength and tenderness. His ever-present troubles he never obtruded on others, but — by resolute will, I think — he studiously made light of them. In this he was helped by his native sense of humor. While working in the chemical laboratory at Baltimore, he burned his left hand severely with nitric acid, but he made fun of the unsightly scar, conspicuous on the back of his hand, calling it "nitrate-of-Warren." This sense of humor never forsook him, even to the end. Shortly before his death, a friend sent him some brandied peaches. "I can't eat your peaches," said he, "but I appreciate the spirit in which they are sent." He had been accustomed, while at work, to stand up at a high desk, with two crutches under his arms to take the weight off his spinal column. Towards the end, even this was too hard, and he worked resting the weight of his trunk on his elbows while kneeling at a chair, so that the knees of his trousers showed hard usage. Perhaps in retort to some mild chaffing from me, — he made answer, "Ah, but when Saint Peter sees those knees, he'll say, 'Pass right in, sir, pass right in.'"
During his last years, finding scant comfort in a bed, he had constructed in his house a little room like a box, closed in front with a flexible wooden curtain (like that of a "roll-top desk"), properly ventilated, and with the heat regulated by a thermostat. And on the floor of this he slept. In general it may be said that, although, for instance, in matters of food and drink, ample luxury was at his command, he lived a life of simplicity and self-control. In the increasingly difficult matter of securing adequate physical exercise, he showed strength of will. His regimen is the more notable, because — as I think — it was dictated by the all-informing motive of struggling to make the most of his life for public service as a scholar. What that struggle meant, is well brought out by President Eliot. Five or six days before Mr. Warren died, he asked Mr. Eliot to come over to his house. In writing of that visit, Mr. Eliot says: "I was much impressed by his calmness, patience, and perseverance in intellectual labor under the most trying conditions. There was an heroic serenity about him, and an indomitable resolution very striking to me, who have worked hard, but only under the most favorable conditions of health and strength."
During the last weeks of suffering, Mr. Warren preferred not to have a trained nurse at hand, although there were in the house those upon whom he could call in case of need. I think he must have seen that death was imminent; but, realizing that nothing which his nearest of kindred and friends could do would avail, he chose to face the end with dignity, serene, untroubled, and without troubling others. Thus in his last hours no one was by, and so it chanced that an inmate of the house, going to one of his rooms at a little after midnight of the night of Monday-Tuesday, January 2-3, 1899, found him in a sitting posture in a corner of the room. Apparently, in trying to walk to or from the room, his weary body sank beneath him. And almost to the very end, he had toiled to make clear to the Occident the treatise of the illustrious Buddhaghosa, The Way of Salvation. In Pauline phrase, he had fought a good fight, he had finished his course, he had kept the faith.
His visit to London in 1884, — in particular, the delightfully contagious enthusiasm of Professor Rhys Davids, — seems to have confirmed Mr. Warren in his purpose to devote himself to the sacred books of Southern Buddhism, and to their language, the Pāḷi. The Jātaka-book had not failed of its charm for Mr. Warren. Fausböll's edition had then progressed as far as the third volume; and with a version of the first story of that volume, the "Little Kālinga Birth-story," Mr. Warren made his debut in print. This translation, presumably the first ever made in America from the Pāḷi, appeared October 27, 1884, and, for an interesting reason, in the Providence Journal. The Library of Brown University, at Providence, contained what was at that time doubtless the only large portion of the Buddhist scriptures in America, some twenty odd palm-leaf manuscripts given to it by Rev. J. N. Cushing, long a Baptist missionary in Rangoon. An English specimen of these strange books might therefore be presumed to interest the University town.
There followed, a few months later, a paper "On superstitious customs connected with sneezing," published in the Journal of the American Oriental Society (volume 13, May, 1885), a striking evidence, not only of the riches of the Jātaka-tales in curious folk-lore, but also of Warren's enthusiasm, now thoroughly awakened.
His study of the Pāḷi literature was now prosecuted with zeal and persistence, and his knowledge of the texts, the unedited as well as the edited, grew constantly wider and deeper. His first objective was naturally the edited texts. These, when he began his Pāḷi studies, were few indeed. The Danish scholar, Fausböll, had published the Dhammapada, with copious extracts from the Commentary (1855), and (from 1858 on) many of the Jātakas, and in 1877 had begun his monumental edition of the Jātaka-book. In 1880, his countryman, Trenckner, gave us the Milinda, a model of editorial workmanship. And between 1879 and 1883 appeared Oldenberg's Vinaya. With the establishment of the Pāḷi Text Society in 1881 by Rhys Davids, the centre of Pāḷi studies shifted from Copenhagen to London, and — thanks to Davids's energy and vigor — the printed texts multiplied rapidly. The first volume of the Samyutta appeared in 1884, and that of the Anguttara in 1885. The first half of the important Majjhima, from Trenckner's masterhand, came out in 1888, and was followed in 1890 by Davids's edition of the first third of the no less important Digha. Such are the edited texts, selections[5] from which form the bulk (say four fifths) of Warren's Buddhism.
As for the unedited texts, — one good fifth of Warren's Buddhism (say one hundred pages and more) consists of translations of some fifty passages selected from Buddhaghosa's great treatise on Buddhism, entitled The Way of Salvation or Visuddhi-magga. These versions constitute, as will appear, a remarkable achievement. Warren's catalogue of the "Pāḷi manuscripts in the Brown University Library," published in the Journal of the Pāḷi Text Society for 1885, proves that he had already acquired the power of reading these palm-leaf books — no easy acquisition, when one considers the crabbed characters, the lack of contrast of color (black on brown, not black on white), and the maddening absence of adequate paragraphing and spacing and punctuation.[6] Repeated evidence of his labors with the refractory material of the palm-leaf books was given by Warren in the years when he was not only writing his Buddhism, but also editing the Visuddhi-magga. His paper entitled "Buddhaghosa's Visuddhi-magga" is a general and most illuminating account of that work, and was published in the Transactions of the Ninth International Congress of Orientalists, held in London, 1892, and may be used as an introduction to his very important essay entitled "Table of contents of Buddhaghosa's Visuddhi-magga," published in the Journal of the Pāḷi Text Society for 1891-1893. Further evidence is given by his two papers in volume 16 of the Journal of the American Oriental Society: of these, one "On the so-called Chain of Causation of the Buddhists" (April, 1893) discusses the famous formula in which Buddha endeavors to account for the origin of evil; and the other, "Report of progress of work upon Buddhaghosa's Visuddhi-magga" (March, 1894), gives a brief but highly interesting account of Warren's work as a pioneer in this very difficult field.
But these minor papers were only chips from the two keels which he had laid for craft of large dimension and ambitious design. He realized how scant at most were the time and strength presumably at his disposal, and wisely judged it best to devote that little, not to the learned odds and ends on which many scholars fritter their days away, but rather to two extensive works, each likely to be of long-lived usefulness and of enduring significance in the history of Oriental studies. The larger of the two works was his edition and translation of Buddha-ghosa's treatise on Buddhism entitled The Way of Salvation or Vi-suddhi-magga. This could hardly have been issued in less than four volumes, two for the text and two for the translation. The other was his Buddhism in Translations, one single large volume. This appeared several years before his death. The larger work he did not live to finish.
First then, as to Warren's unfinished enterprise, Buddhaghosa's Way of Salvation or Visuddhi-magga, — it is fitting here to say a word about Buddhaghosa and his work and about Warren's plan and his progress towards its achievement.
Buddhaghosa flourished about 400 a.d. He was brought up in India in all the learning of the Brahmans, was converted to Buddhism, went to Ceylon, and became an exceedingly prolific writer. He is the author of a commentary on each of the four great Collections or Nikāyas, in which are recorded the very teachings of Buddha. But his greatest work is the Visuddhi-magga, an encyclopaedia raisonnée of Buddhist doctrine. Of all names in the history of Buddhist scholasticism, that of Buddhaghosa is the most illustrious. Indeed, there is a certain fitness in comparing him with the most illustrious of the Latin fathers, and in calling him the Saint Augustine of India. Both were converts, the one to Buddhism, the other to Christianity; both were men of majestic intellect and wide learning; both were prolific writers; both were authors of works which have for fifteen centuries maintained for themselves, each in its sphere, a place of surpassing influence. And it is highly probable that Buddhaghosa, at Great Minster in Ceylon, was composing the Visuddhi-magga at very nearly (if not precisely) the same time at which Saint Augustine was writing The City of God (begun about 413, finished 428).
Warren's plan was to publish in English letters a scholarly edition of the original Pāḷi text of the Visuddhi-magga, with full but well-sifted critical apparatus, a complete English translation, an index of names, and other useful appendices. Buddhaghosa makes constant citations from the Sacred Texts, quite after the manner of the fathers of the Christian church. In order to enhance the usefulness of his edition, Warren had undertaken to trace back all these quotations to their sources. Of the text, he had already made two type-written copies, and a large part or all of a third copy which he hoped might be final. Of the English version, he had made one third, considerable portions having appeared in his Buddhism. And about one half of the quotations had been identified in the vast literature from which Buddhaghosa drew.
As for Warren's other enterprise, the finished one, — the plan of his Buddhism in Translations is, as its title implies, to present to Western readers Buddhist doctrines and institutions and the legend of Buddha in the words of the Buddhists themselves. The book appeared May 6, 1896, and is a royal octavo of 540 pages, made up of about 140 passages from the Pāḷi scriptures. These selections, done into vigorous English and accurately rendered, are chosen with such broad and learned circumspection that they make a systematically complete presentation of their difficult subject. The work is divided into five chapters. Of these, the first gives the picturesque Buddha-legend, and the fifth treats of the monastic order; while the other three are concerned with the fundamental conceptions of Buddhism, to wit, "sentient existence, Karma and rebirth, and meditation and Nirvana." Warren's interest centred in the philosophical chapters; the first and last were for him rather a concession to popular interest, an addition intended to "float" the rest. Much has recently been written about Buddhism upon the basis of secondary or even less immediate sources. Warren's material is drawn straight from the fountain-head. It is this fact that gives his book an abiding importance and value.
The work, as a volume of the Series, has been issued six times. The third issue was one made for sale at a very low price in India and Ceylon, and a call for another such issue has recently come from India. Extracts from the book have often been made in other works; and at varying intervals, from authors or publishers, requests come to Harvard University (as owner of the copyright) for permission to reprint considerable parts. Thus the work has enjoyed in America and Europe and the Orient a wide circulation, and has been one of large usefulness. It is significant that so subtle an interpreter of the influence of India on Japan as Lafcadio Hearn[7] calls Warren's book "the most interesting and valuable single volume of its kind that I have ever seen."
A large part (over two hundred pages, or nearly one half) of Warren's Buddhism was included by President Eliot in The Harvard Classics.[8] The teachings of Jesus and Buddha have probably swayed more lives than those of any other great teacher in human history. It is to the credit of Warren's discernment that he saw the importance of interpreting to the Occident the teachings of Buddha, and chose this task as his life-work. It is further to the credit of his sound common sense and his literary skill that he should be the first to present such intractable exotic material in a way so interesting and illuminating to us moderns of the West. And although the subject-matter of Warren's work is translation and (barring his introductions) not original, it is a remarkable implicit comment upon its quality that a man of so broadly enlightened judgment as President Eliot should deem Warren's presentation of it worthy to be placed side by side with the best things of the Confucian, Hebrew, Christian, Hindu, and Mohammedan sacred writings, as rendered, for example, by Sir Edwin Arnold or by the authors of the Revised Version of the Bible.
The usefulness of Warren's Buddhism is incalculably enhanced by the inclusion of nearly half of it in The Harvard Classics. Could he have lived to see his life-work become so useful to others, — that would have been for him the reward beyond compare.
Mr. Warren lived but little more than two and a half years after the appearance of his book, but even that short time sufficed to bring him many and cheering words of assurance as to the high scholarly quality of his achievement. It was a genuine and legitimate satisfaction to him to read some of these judgments[9] passed on his work by eminent Orientalists — of England, France, the Netherlands, Japan, India, and Ceylon — welcoming him, as it were, to a well-earned place in their ranks. One of the most pleasing features of his later years was his intercourse with the Venerable Subhuti, a Buddhist Elder, of Waskaduwa, Ceylon. This distinguished monk,[10] whose great learning and modesty and kindness had endeared him years before to Childers and Fausböll and Rhys Davids, was no less ready with words of encouragement for Mr. Warren, and with deeds of substantial service, especially the procuring of much-needed copies of the manuscripts. In 1893, His Majesty, Chulalonkorn, King of Siam, reached the twenty-fifth anniversary of his accession to the throne. He celebrated the event by publishing in thirty-nine volumes a memorial edition of the Buddhist Tripitaka, the Sacred Scriptures of his religion. (A most commendable way of celebrating! Occidental sovereigns have sometimes preferred sky-rockets.) Copies were sent, exclusively as gifts, to the principal libraries of Europe and America, the Harvard Library among them. Mr. Warren had sent to His Majesty a magnificently bound set of the Harvard Oriental Series; and it was matter of honest pride and pleasure to him to receive from the king in return a beautiful copy of this Tripitaka. For us who remain, it is a satisfaction to know that Mr. Warren used the royal gift with diligence and success.
Thus the life of Henry Warren as a scholar is — we may justly say — memorable in the annals of American learning. And now a word touching the significance of his life as one of the joint-founders of the Harvard Oriental Series.
Since the other joint-founder, the Editor, is also the present writer, it is not competent for him to pass upon the Series as a fact; but it is permissible for him to explain the purpose of the Series. That purpose, as conceived by the Editor, twenty-odd years ago, is set forth in a circular letter written by him at that time. From it, a brief citation:
The diffusion of knowledge by the modern University is effected partly by oral teaching to the students within its walls and in part by publication. This latter function is a highly important one, and is no less legitimate than the former. Among the works published, however, there may be many which would never be issued by an ordinary publishing house, simply because there is little or no money to be made out of them. Of this kind are the works issued by the great learned Academies of Europe. Harvard University already has several publication-endowments: one for history, one for classics, one for political economy. It cannot be argued against them that a book which the public at large does not buy is not worth publishing. All Universities give the student his education at less than cost, the difference being met by endowments or public taxation.
The central point of interest in the history of India is the long development of the religious thought and life of the Hindus, — a race akin, by ties of blood and language, to the Anglo-Saxon stock. The value of the study of non-Christian religions is coming to be recognized by the best friends of Christianity more and more every day. The study tends to broaden and strengthen and universalize the bases of religion, — a result of practical and immediate benefit. Works which promote this study stand first in the plans of the Oriental Series; and they are especially timely now, when so much of the widespread interest in Buddhism and other Oriental systems is misdirected by half-knowledge, or by downright error concerning them. We may add that such works supply the material for the helpful constructive criticism of the foundations of religious belief, to offset the all too abounding destructive criticism of the day.
But meantime, the study of the Orient has come to present itself in new aspects. At this terrible crisis, the relations between the East and the West are of vital import as determining factors for the future. Henceforth, across the Pacific, there will inevitably be an interchange of potent influences, of influences that will affect profoundly the politics, the religion and morals, the philosophy, the literature, the art, — in short, all the elements that make up the civilization of the two hemispheres. The West and the Far East have become virtually near neighbors, and from the responsibilities of such neighborhood there is no escape. Whether we will or no, we must have to do, and much to do, with the East.
The world-war of today is a terrible warning for tomorrow. This supremest of human follies is in the last analysis a failure — as between two peoples — to understand each other and so to trust each other. For us all, as members of the world-family, no obligation is more urgent than that of mutual understanding. For upon this depends the mutual good-will that annuls suspicion and "casteth out fear," the good-will that Buddha insistently preached two millenniums and more ago, the good-will which even now we find it harder to practise than to invent air-ships and wireless telephones, the good-will weighed against which any or all of these inventions, as essentials for human happiness, are to be "counted as the small dust of the balance." Accordingly we, East and West, must know each other. To interpret the East to the West, to set forth to the West some of the principal phases of the spiritual life of the East as they are reflected in her ancient literature, especially that of India, China, and Japan, to bring the best and noblest achievements of the East to bear upon our own life, — such are the inspiring tasks of the Orientalist, tasks in vital relation with the practical and political needs of today.
The volumes of this Series are largely technical, closed books to all but Orientalists. A dozen or more are of interest to general readers; but on the whole, these books, if published in the way of commercial enterprise, would be foredoomed to failure. They bring to the University neither money nor popular applause. Is she justified in issuing them? We might ask the like with reference to some exceedingly abstruse treatise on chemistry or electricity. Maybe only a score of men in all the world ever study it. And yet that study turns out to be of incalculable value to the directing minds of some vast industrial establishment, and through them to the people at large. One set of men produce such treatises. Another set of men transmute them into what are called practical values.
December 27, 1888, a letter to Mr. Warren was written by me, on the Mediterranean on my way to India, to be posted at Port Said. It concerned the endowment of a publication-fund for a series of "Sanskrit Texts for the use of Students," and was written after much encouraging conference with Böhtlingk of the Russian Academy, and with several University Professors, — Roth of Tübingen, Kern of Leyden, Windisch of Leipzig, Bühler of Vienna, Pischel of Halle, Cappeller of Jena, — and after various promises of cordial cooperation. The Series was started with Kern's Jātaka-mala in 1891, was maintained through Mr. Warren's life by his gifts, and after his death by his bequests to Harvard University.
Warren has been dead now for almost twenty years. Many, perhaps most, of those for whose personal approval he might have cared, are gone. But he had the intellectual detachment of which the Bhagavad-gita has so much to say. He set store not by the rewards of his work, but bv its serviceableness to others. "He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." I doubt not that he has found it. In June, 1905, the Battle of the Sea of Japan gave me occasion to say (in volume 9, page x) what, after thirteen years, I am glad to repeat unchanged:
The timeliness of the Series as a whole is an eloquent tribute to the discernment of my loved and unforgotten pupil and friend, Henry Clarke Warren. In him were united not only the will and the ability to establish such a publication as this, but also the learning and insight which enabled him to forecast in a general way its possibilities of usefulness. He knew that the East had many a lesson to teach the West; but whether the lesson be repose of spirit or hygiene of the soldier in the field, whether it be the divine immanence or simplicity of life or the overcoming of evil with good, he knew that the first lesson to be taught us was the teachable habit of mind.
If this judgment be right, if these purposes have been measurably attained, — then Warren is worthy to be remembered, not only as a scholar, but also as a man of patriotic and practical public service.
Shortly before Mr. Warren's death, I told him by word of mouth that I hoped and expected to take up his work on Buddhaghosa's Way of Salvation and finish it. "But," I added, "the obligation to Professor Whitney is the prior one." To "revise, bring nearer to completion, and edit" and issue Whitney's Atharva-veda took more of my best working-years than I care to count up. But I have always felt that my frankness, so far from perturbing Mr. Warren, was a comfort to him. And now, since his death, twenty-five volumes[11] have been printed; while, as for the heart-breaking waste of toil on undertakings which (by reason of human frailties, over-sanguineness, hastiness, dilatoriness, or the supreme frailty, death) have proved abortive, — "Let me not think on't."
Meantime, various fast-changing conditions inspire me anew with hope of finishing Warren's work, — hope somewhat more confident by reason of bodily strength. And so I venture to print the stanzas which I wrote soon after Mr. Warren's death, when I supposed that there was but little left for me to do, and that I was "hard by the jungle's edge." The third line of the first stanza ("Till sank thy weary body") is true, not only in a figurative sense, but also in a literal one, as told above, at page 381, paragraph 2. And it may be added that the Pāḷi word for "to clear" (sodhaya) is used, not only of a way through the jungle, but also of a text, in the sense of "clearing it of errors" or "editing it," and that "clear" is all the more apt when the title of the text is The Way (of Salvation).
TO HENRY CLARKE WARREN
Long didst thou toil this rugged Way to clear,
Patience thine ax-helve, learning keen the blade,
Till sank thy weary body, comrade dear,
Ere thou the open and thy goal hadst made.
Hard by the jungle's edge thy task I took
To bring it — happy labor — to an end.
Now to the West great Buddhaghosa's book
And Eastern wisdom in thy name I send.
Full fifteen centuries, a man of might
This monk hath been unto the morning-land.
Glad wouldst thou be that still his ancient light
Upon our modern candlestick should stand.
For well thou knewst that prophet, saint, nor sage
No chosen people for itself may claim;
That God's revealings, through each land and age,
In voices manifold, are ay the same.
CHARLES ROCKWELL LANMAN
Harvard University July 31, 1918
[1] Samuel Dennis Warren was born in Grafton, Massachusetts, September 13, 1817, and died in Boston, Massachusetts, May 11, 1888. His grandfather, Joseph Warren, took part in the war of the American Revolution, marching from Grafton to Lexington, April 19, 1775. Joseph's great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather, both named John Warren, crossed over from England in 1630 with Governor Winthrop on the ship Arbella. The Warrens came from Nayland, in the county of Suffolk, England.
In 1854, Samuel Dennis Warren bought the paper-mills in Westbrook, Maine, now known as the Cumberland Mills. He became one of the most eminent and useful and successful business men of his day, honored for his ability and sterling integrity, and beloved for his goodness. His wife was the daughter of Reverend Doras Clarke of Westhampton, Massachusetts. She was born March 3, 1825, at Blandford, Massachusetts, and died September 1, 1901, at Waltham, Massachusetts.
Henry Warren left three brothers, Samuel Dennis Warren, Jr., Edward Perry Warren, and Fiske Warren, and a sister, Cornelia Warren. The brothers were graduates of Harvard College, in the classes (respectively) of 1875, 1883, and 1884, and the Harvard Class-reports contain accounts of the lives of all four brothers.
The genealogy of the Warren famliy, with historical notes, is given in the volume entitled "The Warren-Clarke genealogy. By Rev. Charles White Huntington. Privately printed, Cambridge, 1894." Miss Warren has written a volume entitled "A Memorial of my Mother, by Cornelia Warren. Boston, privately printed, 1908." It contains much also about her father and her brother Henry. Here also should be mentioned the volume entitled "Samuel Dennis Warren, September 13, 1817-May 11, 1888. A Tribute from the people of Cumberland Mills. Cambridge, printed at the Riverside Press, 1888." The first and third of these three last-named volumes, and of course also all the Harvard Class-reports, may be consulted at the Harvard Library.
[2] Elected a corporate member at Boston — see Journal, vol. 11, page cvi. Chosen Treasurer at Washington, Journal, 15, page cxliv. His seven Annual Reports as Treasurer (April, 1892-December, 1898) appear in the Journal, volumes 16-20.
[3] His election is recorded in the Journal of the R.A.S. for 1885, Annual Report, page ii.
[4] See Journal of the P.T.S. for 1882, page 16, and for 1896, page 117.
[5] A list of the original sources of these selections and of those from the Visuddhi-magga is given, with an index, by Miss C. B. Runkle, in the Journal of the Pāḷi Text Society for 1902-1903.
[6] Speaking of these difficulties, Warren says: "The Visuddhi-magga is only to be had in native manuscript. It seems almost impossible to understand a Pāḷi work written on palm-leaves until it has first been transcribed. The natives do not divide the words, and they make use of almost no devices to help the eye, so that it becomes a question of spelling one's way along letter by letter, and it is hardly possible to read currently. Accordingly, I was obliged to copy [the text of the palm-leaves¯](Journal Am. Oriental Soc., vol. 16, page lxvi.) See also Lanman's "Notes on the externals of Indian books," Harvard Oriental Series, volume 11, pages xix to xlviii.
[7] In his book, In Ghostly Japan (Boston, 1899), page 70.
[8] In 1909, Charles William Eliot, after forty years of service as President of Harvard University, laid down that office. He had said in public that a five-foot shelf would hold books enough to give a good substitute for a liberal education to any persistent reader who had been denied that privilege in his youth. The New York firm of P. F. Collier and Son proposed that he should choose the works for such a shelf. The outcome was the collection of fifty volumes, all in English, entitled The Harvard Classics, issued in 1910. This collection aims to reach the masses and to be of service to them. But apart from these higher aims, it is published as a commercial enterprise. This means that its sale is vigorously promoted in all legitimate ways by a powerful house of high standing. Already (in 1918) about two hundred thousand sets of fifty volumes each have been sold, that is about one set for every hundred families in our country. New copies are being made at the rate of about two thousand sets each month; and the volume of sales has not decreased because of the war.
Quantity and quality are sometimes in inverse ratio — as witness what John Morley says of the poems of Thomas Gray. But it is perhaps worth telling, in a foot-note addressed to the little world of Harvard men, that, of that little world, Emerson, Richard Henry Dana, and Warren with his exposition of the greatest religion of the Orient, have contributed most to this collection.
Warren's work is found in volume 45 (pages 587 to 798), the second of the two volumes bearing the sub-title Sacred Writings.
[9] Notable among them is the review published in the Dutch magazine, Museum, Maandblad voor philologie en geschiedenis (Groningen, October, 1898), by Jacob Samuel Speyer, the most distinguished pupil of the greatest Dutch Indianist, Kern. Ten years later, Speyer, who had become Kern's successor at the University of Leyden, published in De Gids (Amsterdam, 1908, part 4, pages 141 to 147) an elaborate article upon the Harvard Oriental Series in general, and in particular upon Warren and his work as scholar and as man, under the title "Een Amerikaansche Maecenas."
Here (in spite of its mention of the Editor) should be reprinted a minute officially transmitted in 1908 to the President and Fellows of Harvard College. The Thomsen here subscribing as President, is the well-known writer on the languages of Scandinavia and Asia, Professor Vilhelm Thomsen of the University of Copenhagen. In 1908, Pischel was Professor of Sanskrit at Berlin.
Copenhagen, August 20, 1908.
The Fifteenth International Congress of Orientalists desires to put on record the expression of its cordial thanks for the great services to Oriental Science which have been rendered by the cooperation of the President and Fellows of Harvard College, of Professor Lanman as Editor of the Harvard Oriental Series, and of Professor Bloomfield as Author of the monumental Vedic Concordance.
At the same time the Congress would not leave unmentioned the debt of gratitude which this branch of learning owes to the far-sighted and enlightened liberality of the late Henry Clarke Warren, believing that his purposes, now becoming, through the faithful devotion of his friend, Professor Lanman, a reality as embodied in the volumes of the Harvard Oriental Series, are destined to contribute very substantially to our knowledge of the religions and literatures of the East.
Pischel, President of the Indian Section.
Vilh. Thomsen, President of the Congress.
Sarauw, General Secretary of the Congress.
[10] He was Chief High Priest of the Amara-pura Buddhists. He was born in May, 1835, and died in April, 1917, full of years, beloved and honored.
[11] Counting volumes 16 and 22, detained, the one in Germany and the other in Bombay, by the war.
