Walter Evans-Wentz

Walter Yeeling Evans-Wentz (February 2, 1878 – July 17, 1965) was an American anthropologist and writer who was a pioneer in the study of Tibetan Buddhism, and in transmission of Tibetan Buddhism to the Western world, most known for publishing an early English translation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead in 1927. He translated three other texts from the Tibetan: Tibet's Great Yogi Milarepa (1928), Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines (1935), and The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation (1954), and wrote the preface to Paramahansa Yogananda's famous spiritual book, Autobiography of a Yogi (1946).

Lama Kazi Dawa Samdup and Evans-Wentz, circa 1919

Quotes

• My friends, the Missionaries have already corrupted and denationalised a large proportion of the boys and girls of the Kendyan chiefs. I could give you names of boys and girls who are at this moment ashamed of their own Singhalese parents; and these boys and girls were educated in Missionary school. And so, from this point of view, the Missionaries have done much positive harm to Ceylon. Let us now sum up-
  (1) The Missionaries have taught false doctrines.
  (2) They have misrepresented Christianity.
  (3) They have divorced you from your ancestral culture.
  (4) The have made you worldly.
  (5) They have made your boys and girls ashamed of their own parents.
• I have no doubt that many of you here are fathers and mothers, and have boys and girls in Missionary schools even now. Frankly, do you not think that it is your duty to have them educated as Hindus? For the sake of Government jobs. Are you prepared to sacrifice the interest of your own blood, your own ancestral cultural inheritance, and your own religion? If your boys become doctors, or lawyers and cease to be Hindus, what is the benefit? Is that the ideal transmitted to you by the great Rishis?
  • Speech by Dr. W. Y. Wantz, M.A., D.Litt., B.Sc. (Oxon.) as quoted/attributed in : Madhya Pradesh (India), Goel, S. R., Niyogi, M. B. (1998). Vindicated by time: The Niyogi Committee report on Christian missionary activities. ISBN 9789385485121