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

Also responding to some of Eisel's comments (although I agree with
much that Rett has said:

>  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.

Where do you find living manuscript-based traditions these days ?
Monks, these days, seem mostly to use printed editions (and very
uncritical ones at that). This is a very big change from the monks I
knew in the 1960s.

>
>  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.

The same rule was applied to Pali as to 'Church Latin' i.e. the
attempt was made to adopt a historically more accurate pronunciation.
In practice, of course, this is only partially successful (in both
cases). I personally spent a week a few years back learning to chant
the Mahaasamayasutta in a Thai style. It is very beautiful and I only
wish I could keep it in my memory properly. But learning some of the
Thai pronunciation is quite difficult and unnecessary for reading
Pali. More to the point, it is plain wrong. Pali was not pronounced
like that in Ancient India. The same goes for Burmese pronunciation.
There might be a case for following Sinhalese pronunciation, since
that is much closer, but still not correct in all respects. Perhaps
that is why the PTS offers a CD to accompany Warder, with the Pali
passages pronounced by Ven. Saddhaatissa.

>  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).

Very true. If someone would only produce it (to an accurate
standard), the PTS is probably waiting to publish it. But are there
20 Pali scholars in the western world who can even read those scripts
? I certainly would find producing a satisfactory study of cursive or
manuscript forms of script across the range of alphabets used for
Pali beyond my competence. Surely this is a job for Asian scholars ?
With modern computer technology it would take a fraction of the time
it would have taken twenty years ago and printers would have no
chance to introduce large numbers of errors.

>  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.

That would hardly characterize the work of Richard Gombrich, like it
or not. Or his various pupils.

>   The paucity of any mention of Sri
>Lanka's caste system and in western scholarship based on Sinhalese materials
>is another example/indicator)

It is mentioned in many books.

>  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,

I agree. I, at least, am in complete denial on this point.

>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.

The only people I can remember who liked or admired Caroline Rhys
Davids's work were I.B.Horner and G.P.Malalasekera, both of whom owed
her a considerable personal debt. Of course, the PTS owed its
survival to her.

Otherwise in my experience her views (especially her later views)
have been almost universally condemned.

My own understanding of Rhys Davids himself is that he was removed
from Ceylon precisely because he was on excessively good terms with
the 'natives'. He certainly remained very well thought of there.


Lance Cousins