[Buddha-l] Re: American mahayana/British Theravada?

[Stefan Detrez]

2006/1/19, Andrew Skilton <skiltonat at cardiff.ac.uk>:

> Hi Stefan,
>
> On Wed, 18 Jan 2006 Stefan Detrez wrote:
>
> >I was thinking of the names you mentioned, but I realized the following:
> >most of them don't specialize in the Theravada, so I left them out.
>
> Are you joshing me?  Leaving out half the evidence doesn't really help
> your
> argument much, especially when it weighs against the claim you make. I
> mentioned
> these guys in my response precisely because they do 'seem', as you put it,
> to
> work on what one might call Mahayana, or at least 'non-Theravada'. Or is
> your
> point that these people, including myself it also seems, masquerade as
> scholars
> of non-Theravada while subconsciously harbouring empiricist yearnings to
> write
> about Theravada?  Perhaps I should have been completely explicit.


Don't take this personally. I have no intention to harbour any empiricist
yearnings whatsoever. What you're suggesting, namely, that 'that these
people, including yourself it also seems, masquerade as scholars of
non-Theravada while subconsciously harbouring empiricist yearnings to write
about Theravada', is a reading of my words I could have hardly imagined
myself. I have no urge to start a polemic on the validity of a empiricist
reading of the Theravada. Maybe /I/ should have been more explicit - people
specializing in Pali texts -, thus avoiding an indeliberate exclusion of
scholar of differing orientation.



> Anyway, my point is that there is plenty of scholarly study of
> non-Theravada
> ongoing in the UK, despite the influence of its colonial past which has
> certainly enriched the scholarly and popular environment here. And
> therefore it
> is perhaps misleading to characterise the UK as oriented toward Theravada
> studies.


I respect Britons working on the Mahayana, but as far as my metaknowledge of
buddhological literature goes, Britons relatively preponderate in Pali
research in comparison with American buddhologists. And that was my point,
for which I'm trying to find an explanation and which has been given by you
and other list-members.

Stefan
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.swcp.com/mailman/private/buddha-l/attachments/20060119/4511afa3/attachment.html