Name Samuel Beal | ||
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Books Si‑Yu‑Ki: Buddhist Records, Buddhist Records of the Weste, Buddhism in China, Abstract of Four Lectures, The Buddhist Tripitaka | ||
Samuel Beal (27 November 1825, in Devonport, Devon – 20 August 1889, in Greens Norton, Northamptonshire) was an Oriental scholar, and the first Englishman to translate direct from the Chinese the early records of Buddhism, thus throwing light upon Indian history.
Contents
Life
Samuel Beal was born in Devonport, Devon, and educated at Kingswood School and Devonport. He graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge in 1847. He was the son of a Wesleyan minister, the Rev.William Beal; and brother of William Beal and Philip Beal who survived being shipwrecked on Kenn Reef.
From 1848-50 he was headmaster of Bramham College, Yorkshire. He was ordained deacon in 1850, and priest in the following year. After serving as curate at Brooke in Norfolk and Sopley in Hampshire, he applied for the office of naval chaplain, and was appointed to H.M.S. Sybille (1847) during the China War of 1856-58. He was chaplain to the Marine Artillery and later to Pembroke and Devonport dockyards 1873-77.
In 1857, he printed for private circulation a pamphlet showing that the Tycoon of Yedo (i.e. Tokugawa Shogun of Edo), with whom foreigners had made treaties, was not the real Emperor of Japan. In 1861 he married Martha Ann Paris, 1836-81.
He retired from the navy in 1877, when he was appointed Professor of Chinese at University College, London. He was Rector of Falstone, Northumberland 1877-80; Rector of Wark, Northumberland 1880-88; and of Greens Norton, Northamptonshire, 1888-89. He was awarded DCL (Durham) in 1885 "in recognition of the value of his researches into Chinese Buddhism."
His reputation was established by his series of works which traced the travels of the Chinese Buddhists in India from the fifth to the seventh century AD, and by his books on Buddhism, which have become classics.