Buddhist Dictionary: Manual of Buddhist Terms and Doctrines
Island Hermitage, Dodanduwa · 1952
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Nyanatiloka Mahāthera
Nyanatiloka Mahāthera
1878 CE–1957 CE · Modern · Wiesbaden
1878–1957 CE
Nyanatiloka Mahāthera (Anton Gueth, 1878–1957 CE) was, in modern times, the first Continental European to become a Theravāda monk and a foremost Western exponent of the tradition. Born in Wiesbaden, Germany, he ordained in Burma in 1903 and settled in Sri Lanka, where he founded the Island Hermitage at Dodanduwa as a training place for Western monks. His German translations of Pali texts and his 'Buddhist Dictionary' made canonical and Abhidhamma material accessible to European readers, and his pupils—Nyanaponika among them—carried the work forward. He is well documented and treated aniconically.
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Stop 1 of 2Born
WiesbadenGermany
What they did here
DOCUMENTED: born Anton Gueth in 1878; developed an early interest in Buddhism and travelled to Asia to ordain.
About Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden, in the German state of Hesse, was the birthplace, in 1878, of Anton Gueth, who as Nyanatiloka Mahāthera became one of the first Europeans to be ordained as a Theravāda Buddhist monk and a noted translator of Pāli texts.
The world in their lifetime
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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Nyanatiloka Mahāthera’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Jewish world
Christian world
Islamic world
Works(2)
The Word of the Buddha: An Outline of the Teaching of the Buddha in the Words of the Pali Canon
Island Hermitage, Dodanduwa · 1907