[palistudy] Re: Prof. Gombrich retires; number of Pali specialists in Europe ever closer to zero?

to E.M.:

>Your reply is most interesting.  However, this is a subject about which I
>feel compelled to be boring.

feel free

>  > I don't think the situation is any worse in the UK at the moment than
>>  it was in the 1960s, although there has been a disappointing lack of
>>  growth. There is a lot of worry about the future.
>
>(1) However, my point stands that the situation is worse than it was six
>months ago, and that the evaporation of the one (and perhaps only) major
>academic chair held by a Palicist in England is a significant "worsening" of
>"the situation".  The question as to whether things are not much worse than
>40 years ago is, strictly speaking, spurious to this point.

The situation in Oxford is clearly less good for the moment, although
the teaching of Pali will certainly continue there and may yet
prosper.

>  (2) The
>comparison to the 1960s becomes rather absurd if we extend the scope of
>"Western scholarship" beyond the British Isles (and, I note, my original
>comment was not limited to the U.K.) --one can hardly say that (e.g.)
>Russia/USSR, Denmark, or Scandanavia are in nearly so strong a position in
>Prakrit/Pali (or Indology generally) as they were 40 years ago.  And, of
>course, Warder's little island of Indology in Toronto (the largest
>department of Indology outside of India in the 1970s) imploded in the 1980s.

I quite agree that Pali studies outside the UK have declined significantly.

Lance Cousins