Dear Nina,

I humbly submit that if something is part of the tipitika or other dhamma
literature, it must be translated and understood as there's bound to be a
telling message. Let's not miss that for the sake of "decency".

I recall on an earlier occasion Piya Tan mentioning the practice of
"Victorian scholars of yesteryears" to use Latin where they thought the Pali
passage was "unspeakable".

Piya said, "Anyway that age is gone, so here goes..." and continued to
translate that passage and the "unspeakable" words there were "dung" and
"filth"!

The passage was rather cute and telling:

[The elephant tells the dung beetle:]
I will not kill you with the foot,
Nor by the tusk, nor trunk,
But with my dung I will kill you:
Let filth destroy filth!

If errant Victorian scholars attempted to play judge and censor to dhamma
literature, are we to follow their example...

Should we not step into the unbiased open before we look at the infinite sky
of the dhamma, for, if we limit our view with windows of "decency" and
"indecency" we taint our own perception with the shape of the window ...

Jo and I and perhaps many others in the group would be eager to see the
translation.
I'd say, let's find all those passages done in Latin, make a compilation and
translate them into English.

Most respectfully and
with metta,
______________________________________________________________

On 3/24/08, Nina van Gorkom <vangorko@...> wrote:
>
> Dear Jo,
> I looked at Pali Proper Names, I, 481 for the contents and now I
> understand why it has been translated into Latin only. For decency's
> sake. So, I am disinclined to translate this into English. Not
> suitable for children.
>
> Nina.
> Op 24-mrt-2008, om 8:49 heeft johan wijaya het volgende geschreven:
>
> > Well, in the PTS translation that I have with me, it's quite short,
> > about one page only. how can it be a long jataka in your PTS? are
> > we talking about different jataka?
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>


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