Pali Grammar by Vito PerniolaReview by: O.v.H.Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 122, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 2002), pp. 182-183Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3087726 .

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182 Journal of the American Oriental Society 122.1 (2002)

very existence to circumstances at the time the book was written, and gave much needed, but little heeded, historical background information during the period of the Vietnam war. There is, however, a very short remark on Theravada- Buddhism in Vietnam in the new introduction (pp. xxv-xxvii).

The following five articles, all by H. Bechert and all pub- lished previously, are found in the supplement (unfortunately, the original page numbers have been erased):

1. pp. 310-42: "Neue buddhistische Orthodoxie: Bemer- kungen zur Gliederung und zur Reform des Sangha in Birma," Numen 36 (1988): 24-56.

2. pp. 343-64: "Zur Geschichte des Theravada-Buddhis- mus in Ostbengalen" in Beitrige zur Indienforschung Ernst Waldschmidt zum 80. Geburtstag gewidmet (Berlin, 1977), 45-66.

3. pp. 365-81: "Buddhimus im heutigen Java und Bali,' Internationales Asienforum 19 (1988): 17-33.

4. pp. 383-412: "Observations on the Reform of Bud- dhism in Nepal" (together with J.-U. Hartmann), Journal of the Nepal Research Centre 8 (1988): 1-30.

5. pp. 413-28: "Zur Buddhismus-Interpretation Max Web- ers," in Max Weber e lIndia: Atti del Convegno Interna- zionale su "La tesi Weberiana della razionalizzazione in rapporto all' Induismo e Buddhismo (Turin, 1986), 23-36.

And finally a sixth supplement is embedded in the intro- duction: "Buddhist Modernism: Present Situation and Current Trends," in Buddhism into the Year 2000: International Con- ference Proceedings edited by the Dhammakiya Foundation (Bangkok, 1994), 251-60 (pp. xxix-xli). Particularly the term "Buddhist modernism" is addressed at some length not only in this supplement, but again in the introduction (p. xiii ff.) and on p. 365 n. 1.

The main body of the text of the book itself stands un- changed, of course, because it would be impossible to update such a book without rewriting it from the very beginning, an undertaking hardly feasible anymore. For, the original was written at an auspicious moment, when it was still, if only just possible for a single scholar to handle the amount of informa- tion available, enormous already at that time, on the history and development of "modernism" in Theravada Buddhism during the past two centuries. Probably nobody would dare to undertake such a task anymore, let alone single-handed.

Consequently, it was a wise decision to add only biblio- graphical information on the research done since the original appeared. Here one would have wished for some kind of a bib- liographical essay rather than the somewhat meager enumera- tion of very few titles. A model could have been provided by the New Cambridge History of India, or, even nearer to the subject, the Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, vol. II: From c. 1800 to the Present, ed. N. Tarling (1992; rev. A. W. McCoy, JESHO 40 [1997]: 107-16), reprinted in two parts as an updated paperback edition (Cambridge, 1999), where actu-

ally three relevant essays are found on "Religion and Anti- Colonial Movements," "Nationalism and Modernist Reform" (11.1, 240ff.; 314ff.), and "Religious Change in Contemporary South East Asia" (11.2, 253ff.). Strangely enough, the Cam- bridge History of Southeast Asia is passed over in quite un-

justified silence. Of course one can always argue about titles to be included or not. However, besides the seventeen titles on Thailand-nos. 14-17 seem to have been "forgotten" and have been pasted as an addendum-frontispiece into the indi- vidual copies-the important thesis by Kamala Tiyavanich: Forest Recollections: Wandering Monks in Twentieth Century

Thailand (Honolulu, 1997) comes to one's mind immediately as an example of an obvious omission, not only because of its rich and relevant bibliography. Moreover, it might have been perhaps useful to include as an addendum the ca. fifty pages of the "Acts on the Administration of the Buddhist Order of Safigha (sic) of Thailand B. E. 2445 (1902); B. E. 2484 (1941), B. E. 2505 (1962)" (Bangkok, 1989) often referred to in the text and not everywhere easily accessible.

It was, however, the right decision to keep this almost clas- sic treatise in print and thus make it available to all those who missed the original edition and, consequently, were cut off from a tool indispensable for many years to come for all scholars seriously interested in Theravada Buddhism during the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, and on the historical roots of modern developments.

0. v. HINUBER

ALBERT-LUDWIGS-UNIVERSITXT

Pali Grammar. By VITO PERNIOLA, S.J. Oxford: THE PALI

TEXT SOCIETY, 1997. Pp. iii + 41 1. ?7.

This is the revised and considerably enlarged version of the author's A Grammar of the Pali Language published in Co- lombo in 1958, a fact, which, strangely enough, is nowhere mentioned. As grammars describing Pili for beginners in a comprehensive way are rare, and as the first edition, besides being out of print for a very long time, never really reached any P5li student in the West, this is a highly welcome publica- tion. While A. K. Warder's well-known Introduction to Pdli, 3rd ed. (1991; cf. E. Lamotte, BSOAS 27 [1964]: 183f.) teaches the language lesson by lesson, and as W. Geiger's Pali Gram- mar (translated into English by B. Ghosh, revised and edited by K. R. Norman, 1994) (cf. 0. v. Hinuber, JAOS 116 [1996]: 179; J. C. Wright, BSOAS 58 [1995]: 383f.) concentrates on the history of the language, the present publication supple- ments both in offering a reliable descriptive grammar, which,

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Brief Reviews of Books 183

moreover, has valuable section on the mostly badly neglected syntax. Thus the Pdli Text Society has nicely rounded off its program by offering students and teachers alike a good choice of tools for learning Pdli on a basic or on a more advanced level.

0. v. H.

La DResse sGrol-ma (Tdrd): Recherches sur la nature et le statut d'une divinit6 du bouddhisme tibitain. By PIERRE

ARhNES. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta, vol. 74. Louvain: PEETERS, 1996. Pp. 449. FB 2900.

This study, almost encyclopedic in character, is devoted to one of the most cherished image-ideas of the Mahayana Bud- dhist pantheon, in popular diction, the goddess Tara in her multifaceted aspects. The work consists of two major parts. The first part is a critical assessment of Western sources that on the whole are reductionistic due to the thingifying tendency of the Western languages and their inbuilt inability to distin- guish between a noun-thing proper and a descriptor-qualifier. In all fairness it must be stated that the author is at pains to avoid the traps language is constantly setting up by using ital- ics in connection with the word "Buddha" (buddha) that only Westerners and their Eastern imitators conceived of as a thing-

person, while actually it was a past participle used as an adjec- tive or descriptor for the experience of having become (men- tally-spiritually) awake. It is a pity that the author does not apply his caution when dealing with other technical terms such as bodhicitta, pdramitd, etc., and continues using outworn, so-called "translations," some of which are, to say the least, mechanistic nonsense.

The second part deals with the Indian and Tibetan sources, in the latter case, both canonical and non-canonical, of this

image-idea. Here, the author reverts to his original cautious

approach by leaving the Sanskrit and Tibetan technical, i.e., experiential terms untranslated. It has the advantage that the material has to be studied before rushing into dubious conclu-

sions; it has the disadvantage that the reader who does not

know Sanskrit and/or Tibetan remains at a loss of what to do

with this wealth of information. The four appendices (annex I to IV) are of particular inter-

est for a student of the history of ideas. As the author candidly admits, much material could not be consulted because of the

repressive fanaticism of the dGe-lugs-pas who provided the re-

ligious-political line of the Dalai Lamas. It is therefore all the

more laudable that the author provides a text by the first Da-

lai Lama dGe-'dun grub-pa dpal bzang-po (1391-1475), both

in the Tibetan original and his interpretive translation, as well

as a text by the famous historian Tdrdndtha Kun-dga' snying-

po (1575-?), a follower of the Jo-nang-pa school of Tibetan Buddhism that was ruthlessly persecuted by the dGe-lugs-pa potentates.

In the conclusion to this already outstanding study the au- thor points out that further research is needed. The reviewer may add that for such further research the present study is indispensable.

HERBERT GUENTHER

UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN

Consecration of Images and Stfipas in Indo-Tibetan Tantric

Buddhism. By YAEL BENTOR. Brill's Indological Library, vol. 11. Leiden: BRILL, 1996. Pp. xxii + 415.

This work is an in-depth investigation of the ritual of con- secrating images, books, stbapas, and temple complexes on the basis of relevant textual material, the observation of the per- formance itself and interviews with persons participating in the ritual. After a relatively short introduction (pp. 1-89) in which the major technical terms with their multiple meanings are lucidly explicated, the main part is devoted to a careful and illumining translation and analysis of a consecration manual that begins with a discussion of the preparatory rituals, an ac- count of the actual consecration, and the concluding rituals. This introduction is followed by the main part that deals with the specifics of the consecration. The concluding third part deals with the role of the experiencer in the multifaceted ritu- als. The appendix is a fairy exhaustive listing of consecration manuals as far as their availability or non-availability to the

author goes. For the researcher the most valuable part of this

study is the reproduction of the Tibetan text of the ritual man- ual. This excellent study is highly recommendable to all who are interested in the role that rituals play in the life of (any) community.

H. G.

Kar glin Zi khro: A Tantric Buddhist Concept. By HENK

BLEZER. CNWS Publications, vol. 56. Leiden: RESEARCH

SCHOOL CNWS, 1997. Pp. 237, plates.

The author, well versed in the Pali and Buddhist Sanskrit

tradition, was drawn by the scanty references in these tradi-

tions to the wider Tibetan tradition concerning the in-between

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