Identity area
Type of entity
Authorized form of name
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
- Griffiths, Bede, 1906-1993
Other form(s) of name
- Bede Griffiths
- Swami Dayananda
- Dhayananda
- Griffiths, Alan Richard
- Alan Griffiths
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
History
Bede Griffiths, born Alan Richard Griffiths, was born in England in 1906. He converted to Catholicism in the early 1930's and soon after joined a Benedictine monastery, Prinknash Abbey, and took the name Bede. Having later served as a Prior of Farnborough and then Pluscardin, during which time he gained an interest in Indian thought. He first asked to go to India to set up a monastic foundation, but was denied. Later, he was sent to India by the same abbot, but he was to be under the local bishop. From 1955-1958, he joined Fr. Francis Mahieu Acharya at Kurisumala Ashram (Mountain of the Cross), where they developed a Syriac rite monastic liturgy. Griffiths took the Sanskrit name Dhayananda, meaning "bliss of prayer". In 1963, he conducted a trip to the United States in which he engaged in an East-West dialog. (Source: Coff, Pascaline, O.S.B. "Man, Monk, Mystic." website of the Bede Griffiths Trust, accessed 2004/02/17. ‹http://www.bedegriffiths.com/bio.htm›)