With the passing of Peter Masefield in September this year, this is the second major loss to the Pali Text Society in under two months.
Prof. Norman’s Philological Approach to Buddhism: The Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai Lectures 1994 is well worth a read. In particular, I should expect the opening lecture, Buddhism and Philology, to be of interest to nearly everyone here.
From the opening:
In the autumn of 1993 I attended a conference in America on the State of the Art in Buddhist Studies…
… My contribution to the conference was a paper on “Pāli studies in the West: present state and future tasks”, delivered in a session on Textual and Philological Studies. It was greeted with no great enthusiasm. People I met at various social functions thereafter during the course of the conference said “Ah, you are Mr Norman, aren’t you? Your paper was about texts, wasn’t it?” and hurriedly changed the subject, although one or two people did express interest, in a way which showed that they had never thought seriously about textual and philological studies before.
[…]
Let me give you another illustration from my own experience. When I was first appointed as a Lecturer in Middle Indo-Aryan Studies, I found in my very first term that there was an option available called “Sanskrit and Indo-Aryan philology” and I was responsible for teaching the Middle Indo-Aryan part of the latter, centring the course around the Aśokan inscriptions. More than that, I discovered that there were, in my very first term, candidates taking this option. And so at high speed I set about producing a course of lectures on Middle Indo-Aryan philology beginning with the Aśokan inscriptions. I consulted all the editions of the inscriptions available to me, read all the secondary literature on which I could lay my hands, and I produced a course of lectures during which I dealt, in my opinion, in a satisfactory way with all the many problems in those inscriptions. I showed those attending my lectures how the inscriptions should be translated and interpreted. I was so pleased with my achievement that I inserted a course of lectures on the Aśokan inscriptions into my own standard teaching. And so, year after year, I lectured on the Aśokan inscriptions, using those same notes I wrote so long ago. Well, not quite the same notes, because as my understanding of Middle Indo-Aryan philology increased, and as my appreciation of the philological approach to these matters grew, I realised that I had tried to say what the words meant, but not how or why they meant it. As I came to grapple with the question of how they meant it, I discovered that, in many cases, I did not know how the inscriptions could possibly mean what I had said they meant, and as a result of not knowing how they could mean what I had said, I had great doubts about what they did actually mean. And so my study of the Aśokan inscriptions led to a situation where every year I understood less and less. To paraphrase the words of another honest seeker after truth: the only thing I know about the Aśokan inscriptions is that I know nothing about the Aśokan inscriptions.
I can almost hear some of you thinking, “If that is what philology does for you then thank goodness I am not a philologist”.
And Wikivisually has links to some of Norman’s online papers:
• Samprasāraṇa in Middle Indo-Aryan (1958)
• Notes on Aśoka’s Fifth Pillar Edict (1967)
• Dr. Bimala Churn Law (1969)
• Some Aspects of the Phonology of the Prakrit Underlying the Aśokan Inscriptions (1970)
• Notes on the Bahapur Version of Aśoka’s Minor Rock Edict (1971)
• Notes on the Greek Version of Aśoka’s Twelfth and Thirteenth Rock Edicts (1972)
• Aśoka and Capital Punishment: Notes on a Portion of Aśoka’s Fourth Pillar Edict, with an Appendix on the Accusative Absolute Construction (1975)
• Two Pali Etymologies (1979)
• A Note on Attā in the Alagaddūpama-sutta (1981)
• The Nine Treasures of the Cakravartin (1983)
• The Pāli Language and the Theravādin Tradition (1983)
• The Pratyeka-Buddha in Buddhism and Jainism (1983)
• The Origin of Pāli and Its Position among the Indo-European Languages (1988)
• Aspects of Early Buddhism (1990)
• Pāli Philology and the Study of Buddhism (1990)
• Studies in the Minor Rock Edicts of Aśoka (1991)
• On Translating from Pāli (1992)
• Theravāda Buddhism and Brahmanical Hinduism: Brahmanical Terms in a Buddhist Guise (1992)
• ‘ Solitary as Rhinoceros Horn ’ (1996)
• The Four Noble Truths (2003)
• Why are the Four Noble Truths Called “Noble”? (2008)
Finally, back in 2007 the PTS produced a 450-page festschrift in his honour, with something to interest almost everyone:
CONTENTS
• Oskar von Hinüber - Preface
• Petra Kieffer-Pülz - Stretching the Vinaya Rules and Getting Away with It
• Bhikkhu Bodhi - The Susīma-sutta and the Wisdom-Liberated Arahant
• Paul Dundas - A Note on the Heterodox Calendar and a Disputed Reading in the Kālakācāryakathā
• Margaret Cone - caveat lector
• Gregory Schopen - The Buddhist Bhikṣu’s Obligation to Support His Parent in Two Vinaya Traditions
• E.G. Kahrs - Commentaries, Translations, and Lexica: Some Further Reflections on Buddhism and Philology
• P.S. Jaini - A Note on micchādiṭṭhi in Mahāvaṃsa 25.110
• Kate Crosby - Saṅkhepasārasaṅgaha: Abbreviation in Pāli
• Sodo Mori - Recent Japanese Studies in the Pāli Commentarial Literature: Since 1984
• Lambert Schmithausen - On Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra VII.1
• Richard Salomon and Stefan Baums - Sanskrit Ikṣvāku, Pāli Okkāka, and Gāndhārī Iṣmaho
• Mark Allon - A Gāndhārī Version of the Simile of the Turtle and the Hole in the Yoke
• Steven Collins - Remarks on the Third Precept: Adultery and Prostitution in Pāli Texts
• Minoru Hara - A Note on vinaya
• Peter Skilling - Zombies and Half-Zombies: Mahāsūtras and Other Protective Measures
• Nalini Balbir - Three Pāli Works Revisited
• Rupert Gethin - What’s in a Repetition? On Counting the Suttas of the Saṃyutta-nikāya
• William Pruitt - The Career of Women Disciple Bodhisattas
• Siegfried Lienhard - On the Correspondence of Helmer Smith and Gunnar Jarring
http://www.palitext.com/JPTS_scans/JPTS_2007_XXIX.pdf