Dear Jon, Gunnar and Piya,

thanks for the interesting exchange. When printing technology first
appeared in China and East Asia, the wood-block printing method was
created for printing Buddhist scriptures, undoubtedly for wider
distribution!

Many aspects of Christians, e.g. evangelising and enterprising, should
be minimal, if acquired at all.

Jon, I am very interested in the works you are engaged in. While all
other religions stuck with a holy language for centuries, Buddhist
teachings have been orally transmitted in local vernaculars, and then
recorded and translated into various languages since its founding.

Even though I am not a professional and still very new to it, parallel
comparative studies of early Buddhist texts is of great interest to
me. The digital age and the new media it delivers would greatly
enhance the exchange of knowledge and expertise across the world.
Please do keep us posted on trends and events in this area.


metta,
Yong Peng.

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, Jon Fernquest wrote:

Buddhism has traditions of translation probably as ancient as
Christianity, in Sinhalese, Mon (See DuPont's Narada Jataka), Tai
Yuan, Burmese (nissaya), one day these traditions will get more
attention. Justin McDaniels at UC RIverside, who did his PhD on
parallel translations between Pali and Tai Yuan (Chiang Mai), is
coming out with a book this year. I'm doing a mini-review of the
literature for learning Mon for the SOAS Bulletin of Burma Studies.
Someone even proposed a panel on textual transmission for the upcoming
Asian Studies Association meeting in Chicago. One might even say that
translation as a part of textual transmission between cultures is an
up and coming field, though people like Ludwik Sternbach traced Indian
Suphasita through India and Southeast Asia decades ago.