--- Ong Yong Peng <yongpeng.ong@...> wrote:

> I love the story of LOTR, but unlike many of its
> fans I have not read
> the book, though I have a copy in Singapore.

Well, Tolkien has one advantage in comparison to his
friend C. S. Lewis: when Tolkien told a story, it was
just a story, and unless you happen to share his deep
Catholic conviction, you won't notice it is actually
expressed there. For Lewis, on the other hand, his
fiction was just a way of preaching.

(It is said, by the way, that it was Tolkien who
finally managed to convert the die-hard Atheist Lewis
into Christianity - but he had wanted to make him a
Catholic, and he only managed to produce "still
another Ulster Protestant", for which he was to have a
bad conscience for the rest of his days...)

Perhaps this is on the margin of the theme of this
group, but Tolkien was a linguist, after all, and I
suppose he must at least have heard about Pali.

And about Lewis, his name of othe planet Mars,
"Malacandra", could actually (although perhaps not
quite seriously) be interpreted as Sanskrit for either
"spotted moon" (mala-candra) or "rosary moon"
(maala-candra); but I don't suppose that was intended.

Gunnar

gunnargallmo@...