Re: Romanization, East vs. West

Dear E.M

I would like to point out some facts concerning your message on  the
problem of Pali in East vs. West.

>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.
>
As a student brought up in the atmosphere of local texts, I think that
this weakness is more due to their ignorance of native languages rather
than the Romanization itself. I'll give an example, which I have already
given to Rett in one off list message.

First, I would like to roughly divide Pali courses and grammars commonly
used in the west into two categories. This division is for the sake of
comparison.

The first would be "introductions", or "courses" just like Pali Primer,
Warder's Introduction, Pali Made Easy, etc.. They are just variations on
the same tune --- explanations of grammatical categories step by step
with suitable exercises for reading, writing, or both. They are meant
for beginners. There are also in Burma similar basic courses like
Paalisikkhaa, Kathaasallaapasikkhaa, etc.

   The second would be like Perniola's or Geiger's grammars. Their
contents mostly belong to the field of comparative philology. A
fundamental knowledge of Sanskrit is a prerequisite if you really wish
to be profited from them. Burma also have advanced works like
Moggallaana Nissaya, which explores almost all Sanskrit sources of Pali
grammatical systems.

Between these two stages, unlike the west, there are much more to learn.
We have the Relational Grammar (which I have uploaded), Formal
Interpretations (commentarial conventions commonly used to explain Pali
text), Thematic Units (sentence-to-sentence relations in contrast with
word-to-word relations), and much more.  These concepts are very
important, at least for us, to read and understand Pali.

However, these things are entirely missing in the west.Why? Because they
exist only in Burmese. They are fruitions of a tradition of study and
research extending through a period of hundreds of years and westerners
cannot access them because they don't know Burmese.

I think this weakness is more significant in dividing the East and the
West than Romanization itself.

>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.  
>
Here I would like to pick up a problem; what is the hallmark of a
"critical edition" in contrast with an "uncritical" one? It is because a
list member has mentioned that printed editions used by Buddhist monks
are "uncritical" I believe that an ideal critical edition should be
prepared in four stages.

1. The editor must collect all available sources (manuscripts, printed
editions, and commentaries if available)
2. He must collate those sources and check out different readings at
different places in the text.
3. He would have to pick the best variant of different readings to put
in the text-body and give the rest as footnotes.
4. He must give a detailed account of why he prefers a particular
reading to others.

Is there any edition in the west that has passed through all these
stages? I would like to know.

Now I would speak of Burmese editions, that is, those published before
the Sixth Buddhist Council. It means I must speak first of the
manuscript tradition, which had heavily influenced those editions.

  You see, manuscript were distributed by letting scribes make copies,
which was a time-consuming and expensive task. The ideal of a scribe's
work was to make a perfect copy of an older manuscript, no more. No
editorial work was involved; even if you wish to edit a manuscript that
you are copying, it won't be easy to give variants or put in footnotes
in a manuscript of Pali text.

The real editorial work was done in */nissaya/s*. It was up to/ nissaya/
authors to seek out various sources, to collate them, to pick up the
best readings out of variant ones, and to explain how and why a
particular reading was better than others.

The earlier printed editions were not better than their manuscript
counterparts. They were made from one or two manuscripts that could be
found and their editors were just proof readers. The real editing was
still being done in /nissaya/s. Perhaps this is the reason why western
academics think ill of Eastern editions --- they are not satisfied with
the editions they find and they cannot access where there is real
"gold". (You see, this weakness is also due to their ignorance of native
languages, Burmese in this case)

The first, and perhaps the last, attempt to make an ideal edition was
made by the Sixth Buddhist Council.The editorial committees organized at
that historic gathering edited all Pali texts recognized by the Council
using the procedure I have given. However, at the time of actual
typesetting, there arose a controversy. Conservative monks didn't wish
to give variant readings because they maintain the correct reading
should be only *one* while more modern ones wish to give all variants in
footnotes. Then they reached a compromise: only those readings
grammatically and contextually PROBABLE were to be given while those
obviously corrupt were not to be given at all. That is why Buddhist
Council editions carry fewer variants than their PTS counterparts.

But detailed accounts of the editorial process for all readings --- how
they collated variants and why they chose a particular reading over
others --- were duly recorded for a future series of publication. These
would have been a treasure house of knowledge if they reached the stage
of publication. However, after the military takeover in 1962, the
project to publish them went away just like many other good things. I
myself came to know the existence of those records only because I came
across a Burmese article quoting from them.I think they are still kept
at the Department of Religious Affairs but I don't know they are still
intact or damaged.

Afterwards, the Buddhist Council editions have become the "official"
editions to date --- in fact, private publishers no longer try to make
their own editions; they just copy the official texts. However, we
cannot say that Buddhist Council editions are being accepted without
examination. In /nissaya/s published in later times, you can still find
notes critical of "official" readings and in a book titled
"Tipi.takavisodhanii", many readings confirmed in Buddhist Council
editions are reexamined and rejected.
To sum it all up, I think it isn't fair to judge by Pali texts only when
you examine oriental editions; the real work might be done else where.

>Bhante Pandita's blog and messages (both of which I enjoy) have mentioned the disparaging attitude toward the PTS common among Burmese monks
> 
>
Among those who know it, in fact, for, there are still many Burmese
monks who don't even know its existence.

with metta

Ven. Pandita


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