Dear Ven. Pandita,

Thank you for your response and I do hope very much that you will join
my mailing list as your presence and guidance will be very much
appreciated. I can understand your thoughts concerning this approach.
You obviously have a great deal of teaching experience and you seem
very well-qualified and knowledgeable in the field of traditional
grammars.

I certainly lack the credentials that you have as most of my Pali
learning has come about through studying on my own since 1976 when I
first started to work with Warder's Introduction to Pali. It was this
book that inspired me to learn more about the Indian grammatical
systems and by the early 80s I was already delving into the works of
Aggava.msa and Paa.nini. I'm certainly far from having mastered any of
the grammatical treatises and I think I'm still very much at the
beginning. It is only recently that I've started to take up a serious
study of Kaccaayana's grammar.

I hate to say this but I disagree with you that the study of
traditional Pali grammars "is suitable only for advanced students"
because I happen to believe that these grammars can be presented to
beginners in such a way that they find interesting and inspiring. My
approach is to go at a snail's pace which also suits me as I'm a slow
learner myself. I think the beginner probably has an easy time keeping
up with me as I don't expect much from them. Lately, I've been
thinking that this new study of Kaccayana could go on for 15 years or
more and we still won't be finished.

I will be contacting you offlist within the next day or so.

Best wishes,
Jim

> 2. Thank you, Jim, for your interest in traditional Pali grammars

and I, for one, would subscribe to your mailing list. But I hope you
would not mind if I say that such an approach is suitable only for
advanced students, for grammatical systems of Pali are based on their
Sanskrit counterparts and very difficult to master. I am saying this
from my experience; I have taught the Moggallana grammar to some
foreign students in Myanmar and, at present, I am teaching Kaccaayana
to three Taiwanese students. At both times, I decided to introduce the
classical grammars to my students only when they could read, and make
literal translations of, ordinary Pali prose on their own without the
teacher's help. Even then, they found it quite difficult to learn and
also rather boring. Anyhow, I do appreciate your interest in classics
that people little care for nowadays.