Re: Meeting with Peter Skilling; Lampang

Hi Rett:
There wasn't any group chanting.  Each learner leant Pali passages by heart,
meaning that they vocalize the passages in whatever manners they liked.
Also the Burmese teacher didn't give any specific intstructions on how
the students should memorize the entire book. (Each student knew that
without memorizing (at least the part of) the book, they wouldn't have any chance
of attending classes.
As for memorization, I can still recall the first passage of Kaccaya, which I couldn't
intrepret when I opened the book, dispite the fact that by then I had studied Pali for seven years.
The incident was very much the beginning of my interest in Linguistics, which is now my profession.
tadao





--- rett <rett@...> $B$+$i$N%a%C%;!<%8!'(B
>
> Hi Tadao,
>
> >  When I firts visited the temple, I felt very odd to see (and hear)
> >young novices memorizing the entire Pali grammar book without undestanding
> >even a single word in it. However, it is the traditional Indian
> >method, which is quite effective in a long run.
>
> This is very interesting stuff. I hope we will get to hear more about
> it from you. It's been 30 years, but do you remember if they recited
> the number of each sutta? And was the recitation fast and continous,
> or was there a pause between the suttas? Did they recite the vutti as
> well?
>
> I also believe memorization is very helpful, and that the many Pali
> texts memorized by the Bhikkhus must go a long way towards teaching
> them the language. Even as a layman, the short texts like the 'iti pi
> so', that we recited, without even knowing what they meant, became
> like a condensed reference grammar later. When I first learned the
> declesions of nouns ending in consonant stems I suddenly remembered
> 'kaayena vacaa cittena' and understood vacaa for the first time. From
> then on I couldn't forget it. It still happens that I 'look up' a
> declension in my mind by thinking of those short texts we used to
> chant at temple. The Indian system seems to have developed this
> method to a very high level.
>
> best regards
>
> /Rett
>
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> Yahoo! Groups Links
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