First, thanks for the link to Ajahn @Brahmali 's lecture. It’s great see this.
I don’t think comparison work can’t be achieved on the internet, but it’s a gargantuan amount of work for a person to write up comparison studies because the corpus of Buddhist texts is massive. To engage in a team effort adds much more time to the process because it’s a negotiation between people. So, this is the primary barrier. Time and mortality enter the picture when a project takes decades to complete.
The other difficulty is that we are still in the early translation phase of the Chinese Agamas. We have first-attempts at translating the Dirgha Agama and Madhyama Agama and first-attempts of selections of the other two Chinese Agamas. First-attempts are important in raising interest and awareness, but they are usually flawed, and it’s the second and third translations that reach a good understanding of an ancient text. The Pali canon has already gone through this process, as the first attempts were made a hundred years ago. Bhikkhu Bodhi’s translations were built on all the previous translations, so his versions have become a mature translation most people refer to today, even if it is a bit on the overly literal side.
We are probably decades away from achieving that with the Chinese Agamas. And this stands in the way of producing deep comparisons of parallels. If we don’t have a mature understanding of the Agamas, the comparisons are going to run into issues. I would say, at this point, the Agamas are still regarded as counterpoints to the Pali canon. Do they confirm a passage in the Pali canon, or do they argue against a Pali passage as a redaction? As a result, the Agamas aren’t systematically studied and understood as their own traditions. People primarily look at them when they have a specific question about a translation from Pali.
I do think we have only scratched the surface of understanding the complex relationships between Buddhist EBT canons. We’ve done some work comparing individual texts, but there are more systemic studies of, say, the canon of the Sarvastivadins or the Dharmaguptakas, which can be done. We have studies of Abhidharma parallels (see Frauwallner and Dhammajoti), studies of the Dharmapada texts (see Anandajoti and Dhammajoti, etc), studies of Madhyama vs. Majjhima sutras (see Analayo), etc. But bringing it altogether is difficult because of the amount of material involved.
Myself, my time is taken up by the translation work, but I do experiment with comparison studies, which I’ve posted on the forum from time to time. Ultimately, it’s not something I can do while I’m engaged in a translation project if I’m going to get the English released in a reasonable amount of time (which is measured in years). I of course compare parallels while I’m translating the Agamas, but to stop and write it all up would double the project’s length.
Let’s see if I can gather up some links to parallels studies or language issues I’ve posted in the past:
(This is incomplete, but I do intend to find a way to present similar information for AN/EA and SN/SA, but those collections are thousands of sutras.)
There are more topics, but I think these give some ideas of the issues I’ve seen and wrestled with during my translation project.
