scholar, in 1919.
Civil Servant and Governor of Ceylon He joined the
Treasury in 1882 and served as Assistant Secretary to the Treasury from 1903 to 1907. He was then Chairman of the
Board of Inland Revenue between 1907 and 1911, and
Permanent Secretary to the Treasury from to 1911 to 1913. In June 1913 Chalmers was appointed
Governor of Ceylon, a post he held from 18 October 1913 to 4 December 1915. Chalmers is frequently accused of having been anti-Buddhist. These accusations are unfounded, for before being appointed Governor of Ceylon in 1913, he was a prominent member of the
Pali Text Society. As such, he had already translated many Buddhist texts into English from Pali, a language he had mastered. Also, when he arrived in Ceylon, his fame as a scholar was greatly appreciated by dignitaries of Buddhism. One of the first official ceremonies he presided over was the presentation of the
Vidyodaya Pirivena Awards, named after a famous Buddhist university in
Colombo. He delivered his speech not in English, but in Pali, thus arousing the admiration of the scholars present. In 1915, a
series of riots broke out in British Ceylon between Buddhists and Muslims. In response to the riots, Chalmers declared
martial law in Ceylon, and deployed the
Ceylon Defence Force, the
Ceylon Police Force and the
28th Punjabis alongside Brigadier-General
Henry Huntly Leith Malcolm and police chief
Herbert Dowbiggin to quell the rioting. Hastily formed units of European auxiliaries modelled after the
Colombo Town Guard were formed to assist these efforts. The soldiers, policemen and auxiliaries were authorised by Chalmers, Malcolm and Dowbiggin to summarily execute anyone they deemed to be a rioter. After the riots, Ceylonese barrister
E. W. Perera travelled to the United Kingdom to inform the British government of what had occurred in Ceylon. As a result, Chalmers was recalled to England and a
Royal Commission of Inquiry was appointed to investigate the riots. After serving as governor of Ceylon, he was then briefly
Under-Secretary to
Lord Lieutenant Lord Wimborne in 1916. He was admitted to the
Privy Council of Ireland in the same year. Chalmbers then returned to the Treasury and served as Joint
Permanent Secretary to the Treasury from 1916 to 1919. In 1919 he was raised to the peerage as
Baron Chalmers, of Northiam in the County of Sussex.
Pali and Buddhist scholar From the beginning of his schooling at the
City of London School from 1870 to 1877, he was very interested in ancient languages, especially Greek, Latin. He was also interested in
Sanskrit and
philology. He completed his studies at
Oriel College, Oxford, where he obtained the
Bachelor of Arts (BA) in 1881. Between 1895 and 1902, under the direction of T.W Rhys Davids, he published the first English translation of the
Sutta Pitaka, from the original texts written in
Sinhala,
Siamese and
Burmese. This first version was later revised, expanded and published by the Pali Text Society in 1926-1927 under the title
Further Discourses of the Buddha. From 1922 to 1925 he was president of the
Royal Asiatic Society. In 1924, he was appointed professor at
Peterhouse College of the
University of Cambridge and taught there until 1931. At the same time, he produced his ultimate work of scholarship: a translation of the
Sutta Nipāta, published in 1932, then considered remarkable for its style and literary accuracy.
Assessment of his dual career In almost forty years, he translated more than 2,000 Buddhist texts. His erudition has made him a well-known and respected scholar. Unfortunately, his competence in this field was of no use to him in his other career, particularly in managing the riots of 1915, which ironically took place in one of the countries where the ancient texts he studied tirelessly for most of his life were written. ==Family==