As a couple of you were interested in the 'Introduction to Pali'
course being offered by Uni. of Queensland, I thought you may like to
hear a mid-term report.
The lecturer is Dr. Primoz Pecenko who (so Jim Anderson tells me :))
is the editor of a superb series of volumes on Sariputta's
Anguttaranikaaya-.tiikaa published by the PTS and has an article on
Sariputta and his works in the Journal of the Pali Text Society, Vol.
XXIII.
The teaching format is a three hour block on Monday 10.00 a.m. to
1.00 p.m. lecture and tutorial inclusive. One of the goals of the
course is to ignite enthusiasm for the further study of Pali, and it
is successfully achieving this goal after six weeks. There are only
four students in the class, with one tutor and Dr. Pecenko as
lecturer. [So the Uni. is to be congratulated for continuing to
support the course when numbers in other subjects run to scores and
hundreds]. We are using 'The New Pali Course' Prof. A.P.
Buddhadatta, Maha Nayaka Thera. [My thanks to Robert Eddison for
alerting me to the fact that the Buddhist Cultural Centre in Sri
Lanka had copies of this book.] As well, we are doing the first 15
chapters of 'Introduction to Pali' by A.K. Warder this semester, and
will finish the next 15 chapters, as well as Part II of Prof.
Buddhadatta's book, in the Pali subject for next semester. Prof.
Buddhadatta's book is set out a little differently to Lily de Silva's
in that in the first 20 pages we covered the declension of masculine
nouns ending in -a and -i , various conjugations of verbs in present,
past and future tenses and personal pronouns. As someone who was
previously Pali-phobic, I can tell you I am thoroughly enjoying the
subject and am beginning to find Pali fascinating. Time seems to
pass so quickly in the class period and also when doing 'homework'.