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

Dear Eisel and Group,


>
>  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.


I would say that the key difference is between
critical editions and non-critical editions of
texts. The choice of script is not decisive in
separating scholarly from non-scholarly editions.
For example, the Puna critical edition of the
Mahabharata is in Devanagari, and has also been
criticized for being an artificial scholarly
creation, divorced from the living diversity of
the manuscript tradition.

>
>  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

I'm not sure what you mean to say here. There are two possible issues:

1) The standardization of spelling, such as
(metre permitting) always using niggahita in
cases like ta.m ca, rather than the mss' tañ ca,
etc.

2) Bad accent in reading aloud, due to interference from English phonetics.

I'm guessing it's the latter you're referring to.
I'd like to mention there that learning to speak
a foreign language without an accent is a special
skill which most people can't acquire beyond the
age of about 14. It also requires native teachers.

>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.

This is the sort of criticism where I feel you're
being fair and unfair at the same time. Sure,
this is a great topic and I'd love to see such
studies done. But there just aren't that many
people involved in Pali studies. If you identify
a really important lack, then the best thing to
do would be to try to fix it yourself and
encourage others to join you.

>  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.

Again, it seems like you are blaming PTS for not
doing enough, and yet if if wasn't for PTS
nothing would have been done at all. People are
working on what they have the time, inclination
and competence to work on.

>
>  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.

Sanskrit studies, in the US in particular, have
indeed been absorbed to a large degree into 'area
studies' using a post colonialist framework. This
is, however, going to be at the expense of the
students actually learning Sanskrit. There are
only 163 hours in the week, and the time they
spend reading Said is time they don't spend
practicing the language. I couldn't be less
interested in essays on 'Feminism and Caste
Structures in the Nala saga', especially coming
from authors who can barely read the original
text.

So I'm actually with you on the question of
trying to teach a greater 'native competency' in
the languages and scripts as a counterpoint to
philology, but I don't see how getting enmired in
Post-Colonialist theory (or whatever its
successor might be) will help with that.

I'm reminded of Tolkien's classic essay "Beowulf:
the Monsters and the Critics". He pleaded for
Beowulf to be studied for what it was, a poem,
rather than a social document. I for one am glad
when Pali is studied as a language, and Pali
literature is studied as religious literature,
rather than yet another medium for the latest
trendy theories coming out of the US academic
scene.

>  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.

It's sounds almost like you're now blaming
Britain for India and Sri Lanka having a caste
system.


>   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.

What do you mean by their 'being in denial' about
this? Are you asking for them to publish acts of
contrition in the JPTS ? In my admittedly limited
experience current scholars of Pali are fully
aware of the shortcomings of the pioneering
figures of the PTS and have left those earlier
positions behind them. Everyone wants to see new
and better translations, but there are only X
number of people working, and doing good work
takes time.

>  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.

Again I agree halfway and disagree halfway. Sure,
there are traces of British Imperialistic
ideology and Theosophy in those old PTS
translations. But there is no such thing as a
"PTS school of interpretation". Nada, zilch, nil.
PTS is a very loose association of scholars, who
as far as I can tell are very aware of the
weaknesses of those old translations and of the
PED. But rather than go into an orgy of
self-flagellation, they're busy working on
producing better materials.

Pali scholarship is no different than any other
field in this respect, that the process involves
a pioneering stage, where the ground is broken,
and then successive stages of revision. The
latter depends on the former. There are mistakes
on virtually every page of IB Horner's
translation of the Majjhima Nikaya, for instance,
but I am indebted and very grateful to her for
making it possible for me to learn the little I
know. She, together with Warder, opened the door
to the Pali Canon for me. The dictionaries,
grammars and other materials now at my disposal
were put there by the efforts, hour by hour, day
by tedious day, of previous scholars who knew
more Pali than I ever will.

>  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

I attended my first anti Vietnam war protest in
Berkeley at the age of three with my parents. I
was among those teargassed by the police, and I
still believe the US involvement in SE Asia was a
terrible and tragic mistake. But to blame the US
for the poor state of Pali in Laos and Cambodia
strikes me as unfair and indicative of an
anti-western bias. I'm not an expert on the
region, but I do know there was a deliberate and
vigorous campaign by the Communists in SE Asia to
wipe out Buddhism. I'd start by looking there for
an explanation.  Also, to say that those
countries were 'bombed into oblivion' is not
accurate. The bombings were directed against
infiltration routes used by the NVA and against
bivouac areas for local communist guerrillas,
both of which were in rugged jungle areas. That
doesn't make the war and bombing less of a sad
waste of life, but those countries were not
bombed 'into oblivion' by the US as you put it.

best regards

/Rett