Re: Arakan and Chittagong Pali traditions

It is certainly true that there are a number of separate (small)
Buddhist communities that survived in Bengaladesh up to the present
day.  NB: they are not one Buddhist community, but fragments of
several ethnically different communities --and I've seen some confused
(and confusing) scholarship about this (although it did not go much
beyond comparing ancient records to modern demographics).

I had a most revealing chat about Bengladeshi Buddhist matierals
(including inscriptions) with Pratyap Pal.  The latter assured me that
a huge volume of art, inscriptions, and architectural elements had
been "liquidated", distributed on the free market, and (anon) some
fraction of it was showing up in Musem collections.  In his opinion it
was moral for Museums and private collectors to purchase this stuff as
"the inhabitants now are all Muslim; if they do not sell it, they will
destroy it".  Thus, in reference to Chittagong, the current dark age
of looting may (in Pratyap Pal's estimation) give rise to a golden age
of scholarship in these materials --i.e., art and inscriptions that
were not much known so long as they remained in the field.  A similar
(sad) pattern could be ascribed to materials from Swot, Pakistan --now
found everywhere except Swot, Pakistan.

I was utterly horrified when (recently) I saw Prayap Pal's catalogue
of Buddhist Art in a certain California Museum --much of it
anonymously donated after being mysteriously acquired in Cambodia,
Central & North-Eastern Thailand in the 1970s --i.e., areas where U.S.
forces were stationed.  There were a few striking Lopburi pieces --and
I wondered if there are any alive in Lopburi who could remember what
the statue that once stood in the empty alcove down at the temple used
to look like?

The Museum world is a den of thieves; but the sad fact is that so few
of the thieves can actually read the inscriptions on the bases of
these things, etc., that historical work is obfuscated --and, of
course, work in private collections is prone to remain very private
indeed.

How did I veer onto this subject?  Please disregard if this bores you
--I promise to write only about grammar for at least the next 30 days.

E.M.