The former president of the Pāli Text Society, Kenneth Roy Norman (1925–2020) was a Cambridge professor famous for his precise, literal translations of Pāli texts.

Selected Works

The Four Noble Truths (1982) – K. R. Norman

On Translating from Pāli (1982) – K. R. Norman

The Origin of Pāli and its Position among the Indo-European Languages (1988) – K. R. Norman

Why Are the Four Noble Truths Called “Noble”? (1990) – K. R. Norman

Theravāda Buddhism and Brahmanical Hinduism: Brahmanical Terms in a Buddhist Guise (1992) – K. R. Norman

although the Buddha took over some of the terminology of Brahmanical Hinduism, he gave it a new Buddhist sense. The change of meaning is almost always a result of the fact that the Brahmanical terms were used in a framework of ritualism, while the Buddha invested them with a moral and ethical sense.

External Sandhi in Pāli: with special reference to the SuttaNipāta (1993) – K. R. Norman

A Philological Approach to Buddhism (1997) – K. R. Norman