Re: Duroiselle's Grammar: New Edition, Introduction

Dear Eisel,

Thanks for this introduction with many interesting historical observations,
etc..  If I have the time - I am quite busy with the BPS - then I could
compile a list of errata for the Duroiselle Grammar. I shall make a few
short comments to parts of your introduction.



   The frenetic pace of the work was partly
> inspired by the fear that whatever texts could not be secured in short
> order might soon cease to be extant, and, in Pâli grammar in
> particular, D'Alwis and Mason both thought that they were racing
> against the clock to find some of the last Kaccâyana manuscripts, or
> else the work would be lost forever.  Were these fears well founded?



Can you give quotations and/or references from D Alwis' or Mason's works in
which they explicitly or implicitly state these fears?

They were founded in the observed brutality of European colonialism,
> with its "Scorched Earth Policy", looting and burning of temples, and
> indifferent destruction of all things "native" in the tides of
> rebellion and repression across the Theravada colonies.  It is indeed
> remarkable that a text as common as Kaccâyana could be considered
> endangered in the 1860s, but the real danger to all "native" culture
> and literature had been demonstrated all too often in living memory.
> The abominable murder of thousands of Sinhalese, and the reduction of
> their material culture to ashes, in the repression of the 1817-8 Uva
> Rebellion, was doubtless recalled in the smaller Matale rebellion of
> 1848, quelled with the public execution of a Buddhist monk.  We need
> not rehearse the timeline of the three Anglo-Burmese wars that defined
> this period on the mainland; Buddhist texts were not only looted by
> the British, but also burned in pyres to break the spirit of native
> resistance.
>



It would be good if you would write a separate, detailed essay or book on
the effects of Anglo and French colonialism, the Vietnam war, and Communism,
etc, on Pali Buddhism in Ceylon and Burma and SE Asia. You seem to be keen
to draw attention to these terrible happenings in introductions to Pali
grammars, but a more appropriate place would be a separate work.


> Thus, in looking back on a period of extraordinary European scholarly
> activity, we must be aware that it was also a period of
> all-too-ordinary European brutality; the expectation of some of these
> scholars was that they were studying a culture that would soon be
> dead, viz., one that they had a hand in killing.  This is most
> infamously the case with Max Müller, and was also true of
> less-renowned F. Mason.


As above, it would be good to give quotations/references, however it would
be better to do this in a separate work.


Although I would not attempt a complete list
> of European language publications on Pâli grammar in the period, we
> may name some of the major works as follows: D'Alwis (1863), Mason
> (1868), Senart (1871), Gray (1883), Tha Do Oung (1899), Tilby (1899),
> Vidyabhusana (1901), Duroiselle (1906), DeSilva (1915).  A large
> number of journal articles and works of early lexicography are omitted
> from this short list.



It would be useful to make a (separate) list of these other articles and
works too.

All of this suffices to say that the present work was not written in
> the rarefied atmospohere of an obscure study, but, in fact, Duroiselle
> wrote in the context of much more lively competition in this field
> than there is at present.


In fact, according to Duroiselle's own introduction the work was
specifically written for his college students in the capital of Burma:
``This grammar was written for my pupils in the Rangoon College, to
facilitate their work and make the study of the PaŒli language easier for
them.'' So I don't think that there was a context of academic competition in
this case. Maybe it is better to talk about a lively environment.

I hope that this is of use.

Best wishes,
                       Bh. Nyanatusita


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