SV: Arakan and Chittagong Pali traditions

Dear E.M.

<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.>

No! Please continue. In Paris last year around this time Noëlle and I
strolled along one of the more posh areas on the left bank (or was it the
right, I forget). There is a whole district there with shops selling the
most incredible "exotica." One of them had a large exhibit of Buddhist art
from Gandhara (sic!). I gasped because I was not prepared for that, and I
instantly wondered where does all this come from.

Regards,

OP
E.M.


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