... And the last word goes to Mme. Filliozat, who wrote to me as follows.
-----------
Cher Monsieur,
[...]
Sorry to interfere with my French feminine frank habit
in your Pali study Yahoo group. I have a few remarks
to tell you . Those who cannot remember the past are
condemned to repeat it… I mean that instead of arguing
about "the Muulakamma.t.thaana(apparently) a Pali text
that has ceased to be extant in the original, but has
survived in a Lao translation…"
you had better to check the texts you look for in all
catalogues available of Pali manuscripts and also in
catalogues for Singhalese and Indochinese collections.
You'll be surprised to find many. Not only a Lao
translation has survived! Consult François Bizot from
EFEO and collection of mss. he has done on kammatthan
(he is back in Chiang Mai and lives there permanently
now bizo@...). Our colleague Olivier de Bernon
<femc.efeo@...> from EFEO-FEMC Phnom Penh
has recently submitted a brilliant thesis on
Kammatthan in Paris, in French of course. You could
consult, with a lot of documents in Khmer, Pali, thai…
his bibliography could help you to learn that since
Coedès and Saddhatissa some progress has been done in
studying further and deeply the new mss. found in the
specialized monastic libraries.
Before declaring that a text is lost, we have to look
all the data existing. I do not keep for me the
privilege of cataloguing mss. come and help, you'll
find at least one new text in Pali out of every 100
mss. bundles catalogued. I think that many texts
supposed lost are just forgotten in a corner and
neglected. There is no inventory for the thousands
mss. (in a mess, spoiled by bats, rodents, road dust
pollution, insects) kept in Vat Rajasiddharam,
Thonburi, a famous meditation school, you could find
there copies of various Mulakammatthan versions and
traditions? Myself I can find in my catalogues few
items never studied.
French catalogued collections offer many from Khmer
tradition (see Au Chhieng catalogue for BnF).In
Bangkok, Manuscript House Fragile Palm leaves see
No.99 Pali-Burmese ka-ga complete;1681Pali-Burmese
ka-gha complete; 2766 Pali incomplete (no end).
Contact curator Peter Skilling <peski@...>
Hope you'll get replies, if not, tell me please.I'll
strongly interfere because I do not agree with the way
the curators keep the documents for themselves while
they are government servants and supposed to open the
libraries and not keep the mss. in secret. All the
collections I mention should be opened to scholars's
consultation.
With best wishes.
J.F.