Decline of Pali: a Western view (what about the Laotian view?)

Bhante,

> However, I think that the very
> success of PTS has led to the degradation of Pali in the West.

I may be the only "Westerner" who agrees with you --but I do agree.

In addition to your own notes (on reliance on translations --many of which
are of very poor quality, but were intended to be provisional when they were
produced 100 years ago, etc.) I should like to point out the following:

  1. The reliance on Romanized text (cultivated by the PTS) has created (or:
exacerbated) an artificial division between indigenous/living
manuscript-based Theravada Buddhist traditions and the "scholarly" sect.

  2. The creation of a "standard" pronounciation based on those Romanized
script phonetic values has also made indigenous traditions of chanting
(etc.) incomprehensible to westerners and vice-versa --except in the
instance of the few Sri Lankan monks who have basically learned Pali from
the PTS.  Western scholarship has produced almost nothing that would educate
you as to how to hear, comprehend, or speak Pali in its various "dialects"
of South East Asia.  I did not even bother to mention in point #1 above that
there is a paucity of texts on indigenous scripts; if you want to learn to
read and write Pali in the Sinhalese script, good luck finding a single
published source.  Even when limited publications can be found on type-set
script, materials on cursive or manuscript forms are more rare still (or:
non-existent).

  3. Whereas Sanskrit studies (and Hindu Indology generally) has been very
active in dealing with the racism and imperialism that has been such a
central aspect of the modern tradition (e.g., the racialist theories of Max
Muller, the various interpretations of the caste system, the application of
Hindu doctrine to social revolution in Indian independence, etc. etc.) Pali
studies have been in a "denialist" mode.  Almost all academic Pali studies
proceed artifically cut off from the study of the social milieu in which
Theravada Buddhism exists (e.g., "Burmese Studies" is a completely separate
discipline from Pali studies in the U.K. --with its own journals, etc.-- and
one has social content, the other none.  The paucity of any mention of Sri
Lanka's caste system and in western scholarship based on Sinhalese materials
is another example/indicator) and, to be very blunt, the explicit racism and
British empiralism that was preached by Rhys-Davids (founder of the PTS) is
nowhere dealt with by the inheritors of the PTS tradition.  On the contrary,
they are very much in denial about the racism and overt imperialism of so
many of Rhys-Davids lectures and writings, and they are likewise in denial
as to the explicit Theosophical bias the Davids' wife (C.A.F. Rhys-Davids)
brought into the PTS fold at an early date.  Both of these influences (i.e.,
British "Aryan" imperialism (defined as such) and Theosophy) did much to
warp the PTS's school of interpretation and translation.  There are many
instances in which we seem to discover two completely different texts when
comparing the PTS notion of a given argument or concept (e.g., the gloss
that C.A.F. Rhys-Davids applied to virtually the whole of the
Abhidhammapitaka) to an indigenous commentator's interpretation (e.g.,
Mahathera Ledi Sayadaw's treatment of the same abhidhamma passages).  The
gulf in interpretation is sometimes very wide; and the thoughtless
application of European philosophical concepts (or, sometimes, pseudo-Hindu
concepts, such as Theosophy promoted) marks much of the PTS's work.

  I'm sorry if this is a bit disorganized, but what I mean to say, in sum, is
that the PTS approach has created an intellectual climate in which both (1)
the study of Theravada Pali traditions has been divorced from its milieu
(i.e., social context), and (2) the interpretations of the PTS and other
western Pali scholars have themselves been divorced from their milieu (which
has been, quite explicitly, part of a project to entrench the British Empire
in India and South East Asia --not to mention the wierd variant of the
"Aryan race theory" that Rhys-Davids put forward, etc.).

> After the founding of the University, its sponsoring committee rushed to
> set up very big and costly buildings instead of seeking out competent
> teachers and collecting books for the library. Their explanation is " If
> the university is to survive and prosper, we must make way for a steady
> stream of donations and maintain it.  Tangible things usually attract
> donations, and the bigger they are, the better"
>
> As it is, the library was the last to be completed and yet without a
> fund for buying books. The librarian had to wait for donated texts.

Thanks to Bhante Pandita for this description; such candid reports from
Burma are rare.  It is, however, needless to say that the situation in Pali
studies is FAR WORSE in those Theravada countries that were bombed into
oblivion by the U.S. during the 20th century, i.e., Laos and Cambodia. 
Books of any kind are extremely scarce in Laos and Cambodia, and the need
for basic Pali materials is acute --this is one of the main motivations for
my writing a new textbook, typeset in these indigenous scripts.

E.M.

--
A saying of the Buddha from http://metta.lk/
Get your Dhamma Books from http://books.metta.lk/
So, when a fool does wrong deeds, he does not realize (their evil nature);
by his own deeds the stupid man is tormented, like one burnt by fire.
Random Dhammapada Verse 136