Re: Buddhist studies in Thailand

Always interesting to read informed opinions based on active research.

It is notable that I have not ever read or heard anything so positive
about the state of Buddhist studies at Mahachula or elsewhere from any
of the specialists I've spoken to --be they monks or lay-scholars.
And, in this instance, I'm sure that the opinions on both sides are
well informed.

Re:
"Some see this as Thai chauvanism and
triumphalism, others see it as a great start to jumpstarting
Pali study (which has become very fashionable among the middle
class in Bangkok)."

I've seen some evidence of this --but the trend seems to resemble the
first flush of interest in Sanskrit among Californians, viz., a matter
of learning the semantics of a short list of extremely abstract words.
  This effectively arms you with cocktail chatter (e.g., the ability to
hold forth on the supposedly inherent meaning of the word "bhavana",
without any reference to context or grammar) but doesn't prepare you
to read a Pali text.  I received a series of e-mails from a "middle
class" (viz., extremely wealthy) Thai who claimed to have studied
"Pali and abhidhamma" for 8 years in such a programme, geared toward
the Bangkok middle class laypeople; I do not believe that she had
learned anything beyond a series of ideological norms pertaining to
precisely the "Thai chauvanism and triumphalism" mentioned, but this
is somewhat analogous to all the PhDs produced in Sri Lanka who seem
to learn nothing but a series of declarations about the greatness of
things Sinhalese.  In any case, it is an interesting trend, and I do
not mean to excoriate it; after 50 years they may have caught up with
the state of Sanskrit studies in California.  I would look forward to
any demographic studies on the phenomenon --I very much appreciated
the demographics that McDaniel put together in an article on the state
of Buddhism in the region.

E.M.