Romanization, East vs. West

Hi Jim,

  I haven't had any time to write lately.  My relocation to Laos seems to be
looming ever nearer; but, recently, I have been caught up in my paid
employment.

  I should just generally note that I did not have any hard feelings over the
interchange with Rett --and, indeed, he and I continue to carry on cordial
e-mail (off-list) to this day.  I suppose one of the most disturbing things
about me is that I actually do compose such invectives with a completely
cool head!  I do apologise if Rett was upset, i.e., regarding Laos and
Camdbodia, etc.; however, it is unbecoming to ignore the facts of history
where the deaths of 3.2 million people are involved.  I think it was a bit
of a revelation to him (late in the discussion, off-list) that my argument
was not purely theoretical, but rather I do actually work with native
editions, and I don't own anything published by the PTS, relying almost
entirely upon almost made-in-Asia resources.  And, as you know, I am hoping
to contribute to the sum of made-in-asia resources with my little edition of
Kaccayana & Mason.  Perhaps the "People's Democratic Press" in Vientiane
will be interested?  The State publishes both Buddhist materials and
language resources, so it would be a rather quaint option (albeit with
limited distribution!).

  I would reiterate that one of the central problems of Romanization is that
most scholars in the west simply do not know the enormous value of the
resources that are produced in Asia.  It is "needless to say" that the
intellectual production (in Pali studies) of countries like Burma, Sri
Lanka, and Thailand, where the majority of people are Buddhist, are
incomparably greater than a country like England, where Buddhists are less
than 0.001% of the population.  Except, of course, it is not "needless to
say" at all, but very necessary: works from other lands are undervalued and
dismissed on various ill-thought-out grounds, and, in most cases, the real
reason is that Westerners cannot be bothered to learn to read in the native
script.  The blanket judgement that many academics offer that all Asian
editions are "full of errors" is really prejudicial and false: just as with
the western presses, some publishers do poor work, and some do excellent
work.  There are various highly esteemed editions of the suttapitaka from
S.E.A., and to lump them in with cheap Indian editions from private presses
of the 1970s is absurd; further, in most cases, the western impression that
Asian editions are full of errors is based precisely on the use of Romanized
materials (e.g., old Motilal Banarsidass editions) rather than indigenous
script.

In any case, there are voices from the East who prefer Western editions,
too, so the dichotomy is not absolute.  Bhante Pandita's blog and messages
(both of which I enjoy) have mentioned the disparaging attitude toward the
PTS common among Burmese monks; in Sri Lanka, one can very often find the
opposite extreme among laypeople of the upper classes, who prefer the
"Scientistic" version of Theravada Buddhism produced by western presses to
the living tradition --encrusted as it is by ritual and many adopted Hindu
superstitions.

  At any rate, it seems that Filiozat and I will be the only ones reading
manuscripts in the 21st century!  If the rest of the world prefers
Romanization, it can only be to the impoverishment of the literature
  --including the looming extinction of various texts (known and unknown) that
are extant only in manuscript form.

E.M.


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A saying of the Buddha from http://metta.lk/
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