Dear All,
I have been trying lately to do (not very seriously) some research on
Charles Duroiselleâs life who spent some time here in Burma more than
a hundred years ago. I canât say I have been very successful at
finding a lot of information on him. I am not even exactly sure when
and where he was born or died. However I found an interesting obituary
written in 1951 (that must be his year of death) by late professor Pe
Maung Tin. I wanted to share with you some extracts relating to Pali.
With Metta,
Florent
The late professor charles Duroiselle was a self-made scholar. He did
not come to Burma as a finished product of the Sorbonne. He acquired
his vast knowledge practically by his own unaided efforts. I was in
the high school class at the Rangoon High School fifty years ago when
Duroiselle was appointed to teach us the immortal Vessantara Jataka.
He had already mastered the Burmese language, though he never spoke it
fluently. I came again under his influence at the Old Rangoon College,
where he had succeeded James Gray as professor of Pali and continued
to be so until he left for Mandalay in 1912 to succeed Taw Sein Ko as
Superintendent, Archeological Survey. He thus kept up the tradition of
a Professor of Pali becoming a Government Archeologist.
[...]
While he was Professor of Pali and before he left for Mandalay
Duroiselle, like his predecessors, was Honorary Librarian to the
Bernard Free Library
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Free_Library) , where with his
quenchless thirst for knowledge he acquainted himself with the
contents of most of the unique collection of palm leaf Mss., Burmese,
Pali and Mon. In those days Pali was only beginning to be known to
European scholars, and anyone who brought out a new Ms., not yet
published by the Pali Text Society of London, or discovered new words
not registered in Childersâ Pali Dictionary was likely to be
considered a scholar. Duroiselle justified his reputation as a scholar
by editing and translating the Jinacarita, by publishing his Pali
Grammar, which was the most practical of European Pali grammars, and
by contributing K words to the Pali Text Society Dictionary.
[â¦]
He had a knack of hitting upon the right approach to an unknown
subject. Thus when most of us were puzzling over the Mon language
(Talaing as it was then called), Duroiselle told us in his Talaing
Nissayas that the meaning of many Talaing words have been fixed in the
word-for-word renderings (nissaya) of Pali words into Talaing.
[â¦]
Shy at speaking English in public, he did not shine in the lecture
room. He was at his best in the library, where he would spend hours
discussing the latest archeological âfindâ, or dispensing intellectual
hospitality to his friends. âA Rising Scholarâ was the epithet he
would bestow on anyone who showed more enthusiasm in Research than others.
[â¦]
Aacariyagu.no Ananto â" This is what I would say of my old teacher by
way of gratitude.