Thera-Theri Gatha

Author – Edmund Jayasuriya

Publisher – Buddhist Cultural Center

Second Batch

ISBN 955-8129-24-0

95 Pages

Edmund Jayasuriya was born in the western coastal town of Beruwala. As a traditional village child, he went daily to the temple to receive his religious education and was inspired by the scholarly and virtuous monks who instructed him. His initiation into Thera-Theri Gatha was his reading of Martin Wickramasinghe’s Teri Gee as a schoolboy, but he now concedes that he was much more enthralled by the poetry in it rather than its philosophical content.

He served for a long time as an Assistant Government Agent in the Anuradhapura District and spent almost all his leisure time among the ruins in the sacred city where Buddhism flourished from the third century BC to the end of the tenth century AC. Edmund claims that he was particularly fascinated by the ruins at the Western Monasteries and at the Vijayarama and Pankuliya complexes. The latter is an exceptional monastery that holds an image of the Buddha perfect in both figure and expression. Evenings among those magnificent ruins and the solitude, he reminisces, inspired him to seek the essential elements of Buddhist philosophy as expressed in the Thera-Theri Gathas.

Translation of the inspired utterances of Buddhist recluses who lived in North India in the sixth century BC has always been a challenging task as evident from such attempts made by various well-known academics during the last 150 years. The present translation by Edmund Jayasuriya of some gathas personally selected by him seems to be a more successful attempt. He has, I believe, deeply felt the essence of each’gatha and rendered it into simple, elegant English. I have no doubt that these poetic expressions of Buddhist monks possess timeless value and they provide the reader a glimpse into transcendental ecstasy.

Prof. Chandra Wikramagamage

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