In remembrance of F.L. Woodward’s 69th death anniversary on May 27 it is a well known fact that after the passing away of the Buddha, the Buddhist philosophy was spread to nine countries, including Sri Lanka, under the guidance of King Dharmasoka of India. Accordingly, the propagation of Buddhism in those nine countries took place mainly with the intervention of India and King Dharmasoka, who was also a believer in Buddhism. However, there were many Europeans who later embraced Buddhism, who delivered a great deal of work in order to preserve Buddhism in Sri Lanka.
Philanthropist
This article is about such a philanthropist who was born a Catholic in the United Kingdom and made an invaluable contribution to the Buddhism and Buddhist education in Sri Lanka.
Born on April 13, 1871, in Norfolk, England, Frank Lee Woodward was the third son of W. Woodward, who was the pastor of Saham Christian Church and later the High Priest of the Lovantant Christian Church.
He attended the Bluecoat School in London in 1879, and while studying, enjoyed leisure activities such as drawing, listening to music and walking on the beach. In 1889 he also won the College Gold Press for Latin writing. He entered the University of Sussex, Sydney, affiliated with the University of Cambridge, in October 1890 to pursue higher education.
Woodward who was also good at sport such as Cricket, Rugby and Football was one of the cleverest students in the university and after graduating in 1898, he became the vice- principal of Stanford College, England. He then obtained a Master’s Degree from the University of Cambridge and continued to pursue scholarly research.
He then wanted to study reincarnation, and in 1902, joined the London Theosophical Society. He joined the society and became closely associated with Lady Helena Blavatsky and Colonel Henry Steel Olcott where he attained great knowledge on the Renaissance of Hindu and Buddhist philosophies.
Woodward had a special feeling there. That is to say, it is as all those who had been attached to the Theosophical society, had met somewhere in the past and reunited with them.
During his close association with Olcott, Woodward told the latter that he would come forward to help him in efforts to bring Buddhist philosophy to the world. As a result, he was invited by the Galle Theosophical Society to take over the presidency of the Mahinda College, Galle, which had been established in Galle in 1892, without proper leadership, and to develop it.
Accepting the invitation, Woodward sailed from his homeland to Sri Lanka or Ceylon as it was known then in the Indian Ocean on July 6, 1903, and arrived on August 1 of the same year. But as soon as he came to this ground, he felt familiar and when he took over as the Principal of the school, his immediate task was to officiate the Mahinda-Dharmaraja cricket match which started shortly thereafter.
Cricket
Woodward was very fond of cricket and during his tenure he rarely played a non- refereeing cricket match and as a result he started the Mahinda-Richmond Cricket Tournament in 1905, one of the oldest cricket matches in Sri Lanka.
Woodward was also the designer, construction supervisor and assistant in the construction of new buildings of the college which brought the Mahinda College, which was in an unsuitable environment in the Galle Fort, to the hill called Dawatagahawatta, Minuwangoda, Galle in 1908. He also donated Rs. 20,000 inherited after the death of his mother to this building fund. In 1912, the college’s main hall was renamed the Olcott Hall after Olcott, who guided him to it, and was declared the largest hall by a school at the time by John Howard, then Director of Education. What is special is that the invitation to open this hall was sent in Sinhala to this European who served as the Director of Education. It appears that Woodward did not want to produce only English- educated pupils at this school.
The Buddhist
To achieve this, he included Sinhala, Pali and Ceylon History in the syllabus of an English medium school for the first time in Ceylon. He was also a pioneer in the struggle to establish the University of Ceylon and was a member of the committee set up by the Governor to advise on education in Ceylon. He loved the Sinhala language so much so that he changed his name from Woodward to “Wanapala”. He spearheaded the activities of the Theosophical Society in Galle and the Young Buddhist Society and was the editor of magazine called ‘The Buddhist’. Woodward learned the Pali language in a short period of time and started reading Tripitaka books due to the association of Ven. Dodanduwe Sri Seelakkanda Thera, Ven. Mahagoda Gnaneshwara Thera, Ven. Ratmalane Dharmarama Thera and other leading Bhikkhus at that time.
He made meditation a daily habit and organised meritorious activities for schoolchildren on the full moon Poya Days. Woodward, who rendered an immense service in promoting Buddhist education in the country, left Ceylon in 1919 because of the unfavourable climate of Ceylon and the need for rest to translate the Tripitaka books into English. The respect that Ceylonese had for Woodward, was well reflected through the fact that more than 200 Bhikkhus attended his farewell in 1919.
He left for Tasmania in 1919 and lived a free life growing an orchard there. During this time he translated five books of Vinaya Pitaka, four books of Abhidharma Pitaka and 14 books of Sutta Pitaka into English and published them all over the world by the London Pali Book Company. ‘Some sayings of the Buddha according to the Pali canon’, ‘The Minor Anthologies of the Pali Canon’, ‘The Buddha’s Path of Virtue: A Translation of the Dhammapada’, ‘The Book of the Kindred Sayings’, ‘The Book of Gradual Sayings’ are the main translations performed by him.
He was the first to translate the book ‘Manorathapuranee’ into Romance language and to have composed the ‘Pali Tripitaka Concordance’, a work that has been assigned to many scholars around the world but has not been completed.