Khmer edition

> Interesting. I used to have an incomplete Cambodian edition of the canon in
> my office, before the demise of the CPD project. If I recall correctly it
> was edited sometime in the thirties. Browsing through the volumes one day
> many years ago, I found in one of them a comment on the edition written by
> my illustrious predecessor on the project, Helmer Smith. It ran like this:
> The effort of a royal court-ignoramus!
>
> Ole Pind

Yes, I imagine the attitudes of the French administrators of the "Institute
Bouddhique" was not so different from the early editors at the PTS: "This
may be inadequate, but better this, and better now, than maybe later, and
maybe nothing at all".

The current re-production of that edition has no corrections --it is almost
a "Xerox-copy" of the original, although produced at an impressively low
price.

I would expect that the quality of each volume will vary (it is comprised of
a huge number of fairly small volumes ... not much text per page) --I
imagine just a few people worked on each section of the tipitaka.

All this being said, the Institute Bouddhique in Cambodia was much more
impressive than French colonial scholarship & publications in Laos.  The
French efforts to study the people they conquered were rather like their
efforts at building railroads: big dreams that came up short.

The French only built the railway about 40 km from Hanoi to the river; and
they managed about a 9 km track in all of Lao.  Compared to the miles of
track laid by the British in India...

E.M.




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