Re: Some more remarks and a request

Dear Ven. Pandita,

Thank you for your recent contributions which have been quite helpful. It's
good to hear from you again. I've just emerged from a two week break from
the list. I'm planning to take more such breaks shortly as I'll be without
access to the internet in the second halves of this month and the next but
will continue to look in and contribute whenever I can.

I'm also interested in the same questions you raise about Pali studies in
the West but since I'm no academic myself I'm not qualified to respond to
your query directly. However, I thought I could quote from an email I
received last year from Prof. Suwanda Sugunasiri, the Founder of Nalanda
College in Toronto which is the only Buddhist college in Canada. I asked him
a similar question about the decline of Pali at the University of Toronto
which now no longer offers courses in Pali or Sanskrit. Here's his response:

"As for Pali, it's perhaps not that there is no interest in the study of
Pali by at U of T students, but that (a) there's no one to teach it, and (b)
academics in N America continue to downplay Pali, in preference for
Sanskrit, the study of which, of course, allows access to Mahayana as well
as Hinduism, and of coiurse, currently, Tibetan. It is as a minor effort at
rectifying this imbalance, then, that we decided to make Pali compulsory for
all our students, so they can have access to the earliest recorded Buddhism.
That is also the idea behind the proposed Centre in Pali & Early Buddhist
Studies." --Prof. S. Sugunasiri, Mar. 21, 2004

I think the matter involves other factors as well such as a lack of funding
and the low demand for Pali courses. A friend of mine enrolled in a first
year Pali course with Prof. Warder at U of T during 1978-9 and was the only
student but the same course for 1979-1980 saw a significant increase in the
number of students attending (around 3 or 4, I think). As far as I know, the
only educational institution in Canada currently teaching Pali is the
Nalanda College of Buddhist Studies and for Sanskrit, it's the University of
British Columbia.

I believe it's the responsibility of those who have long been involved with
Pali and care enough about it to try and do whatever they can to promote
interest in the study of the Pali language and its texts and to offer
support for the continuation of such learning. My preference is for such
efforts to take place in a supportive religious setting based on solid
Theravada principles rather than in an academic one involving high tuition
fees and high salaries for teachers/researchers. My idea is for something
that operates on the generosity and good will of dhammadaayaadas committed
to the threefold saasana.

Best wishes,
Jim

> >Subject: Re: Prof. Gombrich retires; number of Pali specialists in Europe
ever closer to zero?
> >
> >
> >
> The topic of Pali studies degrading in the western hemisphere is very
> interesting to me. Why so? Why is Sanskrit and Vedic studies progressing
> while Pali going down? I'd like to  request someone there to explain,
> for I am a total stranger to modern academics.
>
> with metta
>
>