Re: attribution of the ADP .Tiikaa

Dear Eisel:

>> In any case, "Catura'ngabala" is not mentioned in the commentary itself as
>> far as I am aware, and the attribution can be dated to no earlier than the
>> late 17th century
>
> A rather non-sequitor conclusion, given that every other published
> source (in reviewing the same evidence) arrives at a date circa 1351,
> viz., for the same reasons you state here:


I am not sure what you are referring to when you claim to have consulted
“every other published source”, since there is an extensive amount of
published Burmese material relevant to this issue. If you are referring to
the published editions of Minayeff's Gandhava.msa, Yan's Pi.takat Samuin
(soon to be PTS Pi.takat Samuin), Pa~n~naasaami's Saasanava.msa, or their
derivatives (Bode, et al), then that these texts make similar attributions
should not come as a surprise. It is hardly non sequitur to conclude that a
group of related, relatively contemporary texts, which frequently reproduce
the same information, might faithfully transmit uncertain attributions.

I have been working on the manuscripts of these and different bibliographic
treatises for the past several years -- looking specifically at their
histories of dhammasat texts -- and occasionally they _are_ misleading or
incorrect. There is no question that their attributions should be used
cautiously until they can be further corroborated, especially when it comes
to texts allegedly compiled in Burma before the 17th c.


>
>> If we read the gandhava.msa alongside Burmese saasanava.msa accounts,
>> eg the vernacular Saasanaala'nkaara caa tam'3, which mentions the .tiikaa as
>> evidence for the title, we're probably dealing here with Siihasuura II, r.
>> 1344-50 (though keep in mind these va.msas are also late).
>
> Apparently your reason for rejecting the (generally held) "va.msa"
> date, is that:
>
>> Interestingly the .tiikaa is also
>> absent from the detailed 15th century book list epigraph edited by Pe Maung
>> Tin and Luce, although there we find an "abhidhan nissaya".
>
> Well, that would be an _argumentum ex silentio_ wouldn't it?
>

I was not trying to reject the attribution; I simply wanted to point out
that the Burmese account of the authorship of the .tiikaa is late and found
only in a specific group of related texts. You're right that its absence
from the 15th c. list proves nothing (I didn't claim that it did). I see no
reason why the attribution might not be established more firmly through the
usual ways: close comparative study of the text and manuscripts, different
pi.takat samuin or va.msa traditions, epigraphic records, etc., or perhaps
through Tai or Sinhala accounts. But simply following Bode in
accepting/reproducing the "generally held" attribution (i.e. that of only
the gandhava.msa or saasanava.msa) is not, at least for me, sufficient,
particularly since there has been so little research on divergent
bibliographic traditions in Burma.


Christian


--
Dietrich Christian Lammerts
Doctoral Student, Department of Asian Studies, Cornell University
Kahin Center for Advanced Research on Southeast Asia
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Ithaca, NY 14850 USA
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