news update

Dear members,

I have been thinking of making some changes pertaining to the scope of
this mailing list which has been silent these past 3 months largely
because of my own silence. Much of the activity of studying Pali has
shifted over to the other much larger Pali list operated by Yong Peng
with about 250 members in which a few of us have been participating.
It sort of makes this list somewhat redundant. However, I've been
thinking that this list could take on a new role in focussing
primarily on studying the old grammatical texts written in Pali. This
is an area that has long been of interest to me and some of you as
well and this might be a good opportunity to take up this kind of
study together. As some of you may remember, when this list first got
started more than two years ago we did study a few suttas from the
Saddaniti.

Everyone here is welcome to stay on, but if any of you find this
change of focus not to your liking, please feel free to unsubscribe or
set your account to 'no mail'. Pali grammar can be a really boring
subject for some. I'm also thinking of posting an invitation to those
on Yong Peng's list who might be interested in joining us in our
grammatical studies. I recommend the Pali list for anyone here as it
has a lot to offer.

I have revised the description on the group's home page as follows:

"The Pali Study Group was founded on February 2, 2001 by Jim Anderson
for the purpose of studying the Pali language and its texts.
Currently, the main focus is on the study of a number of grammatical
texts written in Pali, such as Aggavamsa's Saddaniti, a 12th century
treatise written in Myanmar. This group is open to all who are
interested. If you are interested in subscribing or would like more
information, please contact the list owner."

I think a good approach to start off with would be to jump around
different grammatical texts and study little bits here and there to
get the feel of these amazing texts which have a lot of useful
information about the Pali language that we can all learn from. These
texts often quote from the Tipitaka and their commentaries so we'll
still be keeping in touch with them by studying these quotes.

Best wishes,

Jim