Psalms of the Sisters & some news

Dear List-members,

I have been approached by a first cousin of my first cousin to help her in a
commissioned musical project to put into music words uttered by female
mystics from the various religious traditions. She is Anne Harley, Assistant
Professor of Music at Scripps College in Claremont, California. She is also
a professional soprano as well as a Buddhist in the Nyingma tradition with
Ayang Rinpoche.

I'm still unclear on what it is she hopes to achieve. It sounds to me that
it is to produce a musical composition consisting of song cycles, each
representing one of the religious traditions and that would include the
Theravada. And that is where I come in. The first Pali text that comes to
mind when I think of female mystics is the Therīgāthā. I think she wants to
have the Pali in the music of a song cycle. If she is to include something
from the Therīgāthā, there may be some difficulty as to which part(s) to
select as the text contains 72 sets of verses ranging from 1 to 75 verses
uttered by 72 theris according to my count plus 1 set of 6 uttered by 500.
In looking for a translation on the web I got lucky and found Psalms of the
Sisters, an old translation by Mrs. Rhys Davids. You can find it on
archive.org and download it free in an epub or kindle file format.

I think most, if not all, of these verses were uttered during the time of
the Buddha. I'd be interested to know if any of the utterances of female
mystics from the other traditions predating early Buddhism are known to
exist. E.g., is there anything of this sort in the Vedas or Upanishads?

Other news:

My Pali teacher, Sayadaw U Thitzana, has just had his comprehensive grammar
of Pali published in Myanmar by the Ministry of Religious Affairs--1300
copies, 653 pages. He is also putting together a handbook on noun declension
and verb conjugation plus one on Pali morphology, both to be added to the
main work. A second edition is planned which will be in two volumes. I think
that set will include the two handbooks he is woriking on. This is all in
Burmese though but he intends to follow through with an English translation
which might serve as the comprehensive and authoritative grammar that seems
to be lacking in the English-speaking world.

He will be arriving in Toronto from LA on June 12, give a public talk in
Toronto on the 14th and one in Peterborough on the 15th immediately before
the nine-day retreat is set to begin. After the retreat ends on the 24th he
will come back to Orillia with me and stay at my place for a little while to
teach Pali and then back to Toronto for awhile and on to Montreal in early
July where he will lead another retreat before finally returning to LA on
July 31. If any of the list-memers will be in this part of the world during
this time and would like to meet or study Pali with him, please contact me.

Best wishes,
Jim Anderson