Description of my "forthcoming" edition of the Kaccayanavyakarana

As I was invited to join this list on account of my work on the
Kaccayanavyakarana (diacritics omitted) I thought I should post a general
description of it --as it is a most peculiar endeavour I have undertaken.

The following is the "polite and evasive" description I provided to the Pali
Text Society, in reply to an e-mail that encouraged me to "consider
publishing with them" if my edition included a new translation of the source
text.  I take it the PTS doesn't have too rigorous a screen process in place
these days!  Well, good for them; they'll receive a lot of really terrible
manuscripts from California students of computational linguistics, and they
will have the pleasure of rejecting them (I hope).

In any case, the description following assumes the reader has never seen the
text in question, so please do not be offended if you find it too general or
pedantic.
  ----------------
Mr. Pruit,

Thank you very much for your concern; one of your colleagues has already
forwarded my original message to Dr. Pind.  He sent me two messages almost
immediately thereafter, describing the scope and nature of his forthcoming
work.  His methodology is quite different from mine, as he will be
reconstructing the _vutti_ on the basis of inferences from the commentaries.
Ideally, I would like to model my own text on at least one manuscript
edition that has not heretofore been examined or published (I believe there
are several candidates here at the National Library in Bangkok, and in the
more obscure Mon collections surrounding the city), but at the moment I am
still working through the comparative reading of multiple "known" editions
of the source text.

Regarding future publication with the PTS: one of the distinctive
characteristics of my edition will be the presentation of the complete text
in indigenous scripts (I am currently preparing the Pali text in parallel
columns of Burmese & Classical-Literary-Sinhalese; there will be a second
version of the text with the Pali in Khmer ("Cambodian") script --all of
these are typeset in Unicode).  As the PTS is dedicated to the Romanization
of the Pali Prakrit, I don't think it would be a good match.

The edition will be a general textbook, comprising material drawn from
several rather ancient sources: (1) the complete Kaccaayanavyaakara.na, (2)
a new edition of Mason's rather ancient Pali grammar based on and partly
glossing Kaccayana's (this has involved an enormous ammount of correction,
editing, and comparative reading, as no two sources agree on many of the
most basic assumptions that go into grammatical textbooks in this language),
and (3) some combination of vocabulary, glossary and translation to
accompany the Vyakara.na itself.  Throughout, all Pali text (in the current
version) is typeset in both Burmese and Literary-Sinhalese (i.e., the latter
with all its glorious ligatures, not the modern use of the Hal-Akuru), and
there are even a great many passages typeset in the Mauryan-Brahmi script
(i.e., of the Ashokan inscriptions).  All of this is rather on the leading
edge of what is possible with computers these days, and this is, in fact,
the only reason why I am waiting to work on the Khmer version separately;
Unicode-typeset Khmer will only become fully possible with some corrections
to the Mac O.S. in 2005.

The Vyakara.na was already translated into English in a somewhat obscure
edition of 1904; as the copyright has lapsed, the PTS could reprint it.
That edition reproduced the Pali in Devanagari; and this is perhaps why it
is so little known!

At this stage of the work, many would ask "Why not prepare a translation of
your own?", but several factors deter me at present.  I have full-time
employment in the Museum profession [reducing the number of hours I have to
work on this book], and, quite apart from practical concerns, I am more
eager to arrange for a translation of the English content (i.e., of the
general grammar and gloss/explanation) into modern Khmer ("Cambodian") --for
there is an acute need for Pali textbooks in that language.

Frankly, there is an acute need for better Pali textbooks in English; but I
will not digress.

The primary value of the Kaccayanavyakara.na is really in memorizing it as
a set of mnemonic keys to the grammar; thus, while explaining the content is
very important, direct translation of the text is not quite as useful.  It
is a book composed of aphorisms along the lines of the English rhyming rule:
"'i' before 'e' except after 'c'
  or when with an 'ay'
  as in 'neighbor' or 'weigh'"
  --which is to say, much of it is entirely baffling, except as a reminder of
a rule you're supposed to already understand.

Apart from its didactic value (i.e., for aspiring palicists like myself)
the book is also of enormous historical significance --and, in comparison to
the study of Panini among Sanskritists-- it has been very much neglected in
Pali studies.  So I hope that both my edition and Dr. Pind's will revive the
study of the book, which has been dormant (in the west) for 100 years, and
seems to have faded in Burma and Sri Lanka, if not entirely in Thailand,

Best regards,

Eisel Mazard
Bangkok, Nov. 9th



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