Posted on

2026 I.B. Horner Memorial Lecture

We are pleased to announce that the 21st I. B. Horner Memorial Lecture will be held on 25th September at 5 p.m. in the Gillis Lecture Theatre, Balliol College, Oxford, OX1 3BJ. It will be given by Dr Eng Jin Ooi, Palyul-Khyentse Chair in Buddhist Textual Studies and Dean of the Faculty of Buddhist Studies at the International Buddhist College in Thailand.

The lecture is free to attend. We also hope to make the lecture available via live stream. More information will be available shortly.

The Pubbayoga of the Milindapañha: Parallel transmissions in Siam from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries CE

The Milindapañha (Questions of Milinda) textual tradition in Pali has been preserved across various genres of texts in Siam. These include the Milindapañha (vitthāra), its condensed version, the Milindapañha Saṅkhepa (Mil-s), a segment of another text in verse, the Vaṃsamālinī, and the first chapter of the chronicle of the celebrated Emerald Buddha, the Ratanabimbavaṃsa. Furthermore, even within the longer vitthāra versions, several recensions have circulated, specifically the Ayutthaya, Lamphun, and Bangkok recensions. These recensions show noticeable differences in content, length, syntax, and style. On the other hand, Mil-s is not just a section of the longer version; a significant part of its content is absent from the three recensions mentioned. Conversely, the Ratanabimbavaṃsa, written in Northern Thailand during the fifteenth century, transmitted a brief opening section of the Milindapañha, the Pubbayoga, which recounts the historical connection between the two main interlocutors of the text, the monk Nāgasena and King Milinda. Some of these texts have been transmitted together since the fifteenth century. As a result, the development of the Siamese Milindapañha Pali textual tradition can be traced from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries, covering nearly five hundred years. This lecture provides an initial comparative analysis of the literary traditions of these texts found in palm-leaf manuscripts preserved in Thailand, with a primary focus on the Pubbayoga. The analysis reveals a complex, multilayered interweaving of texts, redactors’ innovations, and the complementary roles these texts play in maintaining the literary tradition. Therefore, the textual tradition of Milindapañha has not remained unchanged over the centuries in the hands of dynamic and autonomous literary centres across pre-modern Thailand, and the surviving manuscripts reflect its evolution over time and place. This suggests the need for closer examination of other recensions transmitted within different textual communities.

Posted on

Volume 36 of JPTS published online

The Pali Text Society is pleased to announce the publication of volume 36 of the Journal of the Pali Text Society.

This volume is published online on the Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing server as an open access journal:

https://hasp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/jpts/index

Volumes 20 to 35 (1994–2024) of JPTS are also available on the above site. The remaining volumes will be uploaded later this month. All past issues of JPTS are also available for download on the PTS website: https://palitextsociety.org/jpts-previous-editions/. Hard copies of JPTS volume 36 will be available for purchase on the PTS website in September.
Posted on

Submissions welcomed for future volumes of the JPTS

With the publication of volume 35 in a new format, the Council of the PTS Council wishes to relaunch the Journal with a view to publishing one volume annually. The next volume (36) will be published before the end of June 2025.

The editors invite submissions of scholarly articles relevant to any aspect of Pali studies. Particularly welcome are submissions related to the following areas:

  • the study of individual texts or parts of texts,
  • editions and/or translations of short texts or parts of texts,
  • the study of genres of Pali literature,
  • studies of particular Pali terms or expressions,
  • the grammar of Pali,
  • the history of Pali literature.
  • the relationship of Pali texts to texts in other languages,
  • the history of Pali textual transmission,
  • the history of Pali manuscripts,
  • the history of the Pali language,
  • the history of Pali studies.

All submissions are peer reviewed by two scholars familiar with the field.

Submissions should be sent to the editors by email at info@palitextsociety.org.

Posted on

Volume 35 of the JPTS Published

The Pali Text Society is pleased to announce the publication of volume 35 of the Journal of the Pali Text Society, edited by Rupert Gethin and Petra Kieffer-Pülz.

The Journal is open access. Individual articles are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY) and can be downloaded via the following link:

https://palitextsociety.org/current-edition-volume-35-2024/

CONTENTS

  1. Eivind Kahrs: K.R. Norman, 1925-2020, 3–6.
  2. Aruna Gamage: Convention of Speech (rūḷhi) in Theriya Buddhism: The Law of Generalization, 7–56.
  3. Petra Kieffer-Pülz and D. Christian Lammerts: Two Legal Judgments on Monastic Boundaries from Nineteenth-Century Burma: Khaṅ ma kan charā tau Maṇijota’s Sīmāvinicchaya with an appendix on Aoṅ mre rhve bhuṃ charā tau Ketudhamma’s Sīmāvinicchaya, 57–116.
  4. Peera Panarut and Silpsupa Jaengsawang: Princess Bualai’s Embroidered Kammavācā Manuscripts from Thailand, 117–64.
  5. Javier Schnake: Two Systems of Numerical Notation in Pali Buddhism, 164–193.

Hard copies of the Journal can be purchased (£25) via the following link:

https://palitextsociety.org/product/journal-of-the-pali-text-society-vol-35-2024-paperback/

Articles from previous issues can also be downloaded from the PTS website here.

Posted on

2024 I.B. Horner Memorial Lecture

The Pali Text Society is pleased to announce that the 20th I.B. Horner Lecture will be given by Dr Aleix  Ruiz Falqués, Shan State Buddhist University/Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in Paris on 27th September 2024.

The Lecture will follow the AGM and begin at approximately 5pm Central European Summer Time (UTC+02:00; GMT+2; 4pm British Summer Time; 11am Eastern Daylight Time; 8.30pm Indian/Sri Lankan Standard Time)

This lecture is open to the public, but please note that because of security at the Sorbonne, those wishing to attend the lecture and also PTS members wishing to attend the AGM need to send their names to the PTS administrator Andrew Bishop by email (info@palitextsociety.org) by 18 September, otherwise access to the building cannot be guaranteed.

In order to attend the lecture virtually, please follow this link.
*Please be advised that we are unable to ensure the reliability of the technology in advance of the lecture and therefore cannot guarantee that it will work. We apologise in advance for any inconvenience.*

Organic Pali Grammar
Makāralopa’s Encyclopedia of Pali Grammar: A Burmese 18th-century Manual for Pali Students

The study of Pali grammar is, without doubt, a cornerstone of Theravāda monastic education. Beginning with ancient treatises such as the Kaccāyana (ca. 6th century CE), works on Pali grammar have proliferated across the Theravāda world over the centuries. Some of these treatises are still used in Theravāda countries, but they have not received substantial attention from western Pali scholars. This lecture will examine one such treatise, namely, a Burmese handbook for beginners known as the Encyclopedia of Pali Grammar. It was written by an 18th-century polymath, Makāralopa (ca. 1722–1780), perhaps the most celebrated genius of his epoch. He wrote 37 books on both mundane and supramundane subjects. Makāralopa’s Encyclopedia of Pali Grammar consists of a bilingual Pali-Burmese re-arrangement and exposition of the Kaccāyana grammar. Importantly, it also incorporates chapters on hermeneutics and scholastic exegesis. It is therefore not a mere formal introduction to Pali as a language, but rather a method of textual analysis for those who wish to analyse the Tipiṭaka and the commentarial literature. In Makāralopa’s book, grammar, philosophy, metaphysics and poetry are parts of one single ‘organon’. The fact that this 18th-century manual is still considered a useful handbook in Burma is testimony to the vitality of the ancient grammatical tradition of Pāṇini, Patañjali and other Indian masters in today’s Buddhist world of Southeast Asia. This critical examination of Makāralopa’s Encyclopedia will also be an opportunity to reflect on the implicit assumptions in Pali learning methodologies, past and present.

Posted on

Change of Address

The PTS’ registered office address has changed. Our new postal address is Pali Text Society, c/o Critchleys LLP, Beaver House, 23–38 Hythe Bridge Street, Oxford, Oxfordshire OX1 2EP

Email continues to be our preferred method of communication. The Society can be contacted at info@palitextsociety.org

Posted on

Paul Dundas 1952–2023

Paul Dundas, a member of the Council of the PTS since 2005, sadly died in April this this year at the age of 70. At the meetings of Council held in March and September each year, Paul was a wonderfully humane and helpful presence. He will be greatly missed. We reproduce below a short obituary posted on the Indology list shortly after his death by his former colleagues at the Universtiy of Edinburgh, Peter Bisschop and John Brockington.

Paul started studying Sanskrit and Prakrit as an undergraduate at the University of Edinburgh with Michael Coulson and had a short period as a postgraduate at the University of Cambridge with among others, John Brough and K.R. Norman, before accepting the post in Sanskrit at Edinburgh in 1976, where he continued to teach and research throughout his entire career until his retirement as reader only a few years ago. He was a member of the Council of the Pali Text Society, and the recipient of the Prakrit Jñānabhāratī International award in 2019. Paul was a towering figure in the field of Jain and Prakrit studies and will be known to most scholars and students as the author of The Jains, of which the first edition appeared in 1992 and which continues to be the most reliable introduction to Jainism to the present day. From his many other publications in the field we would like to single out History, Scripture and Controversy in a Medieval Jain Sect, published in 2007, a book of vast and penetrating learning with a relevance far beyond that of medieval Jainism alone. But Paul also had a great passion for all things Sanskrit, reading across the entire spectrum of Sanskrit literature. Testimony to this is his wonderful translation of Māgha’s Śiśupālavadha, published in the Murty Classical Library of India in 2017, the first complete English translation of this truly difficult Sanskrit Mahākāvya. His latest publication appeared in 2022, in the Eivind Kahrs felicitation volume Jñānapraśaṃsā: “Sectarian Confrontation as Theatrical Diversion: Observations on Yaśaścandra’s Mudritakumudacandraprakaraṇa and the Jain Debate at Aṇahillapaṭṭana”. Paul was still actively engaged in several other projects. His death is a great loss to the field.

Paul was one of the most learned and well read people we have known. He was also most generous and kind, and we will sorely miss his presence and humour.

Our thoughts are with his partner, Rowan Flett.