Re: Online version of A Critical Pali Dictionary

Ole,

> ... mercantile
>  interests have taken over just about everywhere [in academia].

Of course, there is a lot of truth to this (I recall that A.K. Warder
insisted on the importance of this in our long interview) --but the
exceptions to the rule are (thus) even more important to recognise.

Have you (or has anyone on the list) visited the department of
Indology in Warsaw?  I inquired with several people who "know" Polish
academia, as Dr. J. Jurewicz is there (and I read her article, lately
published in the JPTS) --and they not only insisted that Polish
academia has remained unchanged since the advent of Communism,
moreover they insisted it has changed little since the Dark Ages!  And
this was meant as a compliment!

Chinese academia, too, with its culture of "the iron rice bowl", and
its cult of the scholar, interests me --and, as you know, it seems to
interest me enough to invest several years and a portion of my brain
to try living there, and learning the language.

On a separate but related strand: what I observe is that the
"mercantilization" of academia has resulted in the massive
proliferation of what was formerly confined to departments of
literature, viz., the assumption that "real scholars" carry out
research independently, and then simply show up to collect the degree
"after the fact".

In other words, even philologists now collect PhDs as if they were an
"honourary" ornament to independent work.

This pattern is certainly understandable for creative writing (viz.,
awarding PhDs to dramatists, poets, etc., whose work neither relies
upon nor benefits from institutional support --or even for certain
forms of anthropology, where field work is of paramount importance)
but it is a real regression for philology --indeed, it is a kind of
admission that the institutions lag far behind personal initiative,
and really can provide little more than an empty room for scholars to
conduct their research in.

However, so as not to end on a pessimistic note, I would re-iterate
that my impression is: there is much more than an empty room in Warsaw
--and they seem to have an indology department with a range of
competences, from Sanskrit to Jain Prakrit, etc.

E.M.