Praise for Ole Pind's _Survey_ of Pali Grammatica

I am both very pleased and very relieved to (at last) read Dr. Pind's
article on Pali grammarians from the Japanese Journal of Buddhist
studies.

I would strongly urge Dr. Bedell to seek out a copy of the article as
well --at the very least it shows how much more progress can be made
in understanding the nature (and history) of Kacc. when we begin by
treating the Sutta and the Vutti "layers" as two separate texts --from
two or more periods of time.

I say that I am relieved as Dr. Pind broaches many issues that I was
aware of but *not* looking forward to writing footnotes about _ex
nihilo_ (e.g., the issue of the missing retroflex ".l", the
inconsistent use of certain explanatory verbs in the Vutti to
different chapters, etc.).

Pind's article really provides a compendium of important observations
on Kaccayana --it is really infinitely better than anything written
before.

One of the few oddities in Kacc. that I would draw more attention to
(i.e., that I wouild emphasise rather more than Pind's article does)
is Kacc.'s use of "Okaasa" where any/every grammarian (in later Pali
or Sanskrit) would use a more logical and lingual term.  _Okaasa_ is,
in many ways, the wrong word to use, and seems to indicate that the
authors of Kacc did not know the "proper" terms being used for this in
the 7th & 8th centuries; so instead we get a highly
cosmological/metaphysical word that means "empty space" being used to
explain the (definitely) non-empty space in a sentence.

Again, many thans to Dr. Pind,

I would not have (and do not intend to) carried out the comparative
reading of MMD that provides many of his interesting comments on the
comparative development/devolution of Kacc-v,

E.M