(Would this article be of interest to The Nation? I
have been invited to the presentation of the Tipitaka
at the Royal Library in Stockholm next Monday, but not
to Uppsala the day after.

Yours sincerely,
Gunnar Gällmo, Tensta Allé 12, S-163 64 Spånga,
Sweden)

The Tipitaka gift to Sweden - why only on paper?

Being at present, as far as I know, the only
professional translator doing translations directly
from Pali into Swedish, it was with great interest
that I read your article, published on August 17,
2005, and titled "Romanising the Tipitaka".

As the Uppsala University, where the Tipitaka is going
to be presented next tuesday, happens to be my old
Alma Mater, where I began my studies forty years ago
and where I lived when I first took the Triple Refuge
in 1968, I am very happy that the third copy of the
new Siamese edition of the Pali Tipitaka in Roman
script will be going there.

However, your article contains a serious error:

This valuable edition is by no means "the world’s
first Tipitaka Buddhist canon in Pali, in romanised
script", as you write; I don't know how many previous
editions of the kind there are, but I have myself
consulted two of them: the Pali Text Society edition
from England, began more than a hundred years ago and
available on paper, and the Vipassana Research
Institute edition from India, available as a CD and
also on-line at <http://www.tipitaka.org/>; the latter
is founded on the text of the Sixth Sangayana in
Rangoon 1953-1956, just as the new Siamese edition.

The PTS edition was not founded on the Sixth
Sangayana, because it was largely completed when that
took place; on the other hand, the edition in
Devanagari script of the Nava Nalanda Maha Vihara in
India was a Sixth Sangayana version. I think it is out
of print now, unfortunately; it was very valuable.

And talking about that, this new Siamese edition has,
at least today, one serious drawback:

I suppose it is better proof-read than the previous
editions; but we Pali translators, and anyone else who
is actually working with the canonical Pali texts,
can't use it. It's not available to us, so we have to
continue using the older VRI edition.

The reason is that the people behind this new project
have decided to distribute it firstly, and very
slowly, in paper form; your article says that only
three copies are yet complete. I have been told that
they intend to distribute at least one thousand copies
in this form before making the text electronically
available.

As the text certainly has passed a computer memory, it
wouldn't be difficult to put it in the net at once, as
an alternative to the VRI version; but this is not
done.

I can't avoid the impression that the people behind
the project are regarding the Tipitaka as an object of
worship rather than something to be put to practical
use (which I think is what the monks of the six
councils have always intended it to be).

And it gives me pain that all the valuable work done
by a lot of honest people is, in this manner, actually
put to waste.

Gunnar Gällmo
Pali translator, Stockholm, Sweden


gunnargallmo@...