Walpola Rahula

Walpola Rahula was born on 9 May 1907 in Walpola, in southern Sri Lanka. He was ordained as a monk at thirteen, in 1920, and trained under Paragoda Sumanasara. The Walpola Rahula Institute says he took an honours degree in Eastern languages in 1941, the first Sri Lankan monk with a university education, and later a doctorate from the University of Ceylon.

In the 1950s he studied at the Sorbonne under Paul Demiéville. There he translated Asanga’s Abhidharma-samuccaya into French and wrote What the Buddha Taught. First published in London in 1959, it is described by the Institute as the most widely read book on Buddhism in the Western world.

In the 1960s he became professor of history and religions at Northwestern University in the United States. Buddho.org calls him the first bhikkhu to hold a professorial chair in the Western world. He was also vice-chancellor of Vidyodaya University in Sri Lanka and left that post in 1969, resigning, the Institute says, over political interference in the university’s autonomy.

He returned to Sri Lanka in the early 1980s. He helped found the Buddhist and Pali University of Sri Lanka and established the Buddhist Study and Research Institute, later renamed for him. He was chancellor of the University of Kelaniya until he died on 18 September 1997, aged 90.

What the Buddha Taught remains the book he is known for.