Thank you for the feedback. I tried to clarify the question further based on your helpful response.
Duly noted! Thank you for clarifying these expectations.
I totally agree with the overall sentiment.
When I looked for professors at universities across the world, I found that very few of them specialized in early Buddhism, and perhaps even less in early Buddhist texts.
Because I did this search prior to enrolling in my current program, I will probably have to search again (and hopefully post the results of my search here).
That being said, I was hoping to get some recommendations here because searching online is a very imperfect and unreliable process, especially in a field as small as Buddhist studies. My current research advisor/supervisor was actually recommended to me by someone who I was put in touch with in the process of emailing venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi for recommendations.
Yes, definitely.
One thing that I know for sure is that I would like to focus primarily on using early Buddhist texts as the main “source of textual data” for whatever specific research topic that I may do.
I have pivoted my current research to focus on the following topical areas:
(“early”) Buddhism, leadership, happiness, and mental support
Whatever focused topic I choose would probably be something not far away from these.
I seem primarily interested in learn Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Pali - as opposed to Pali alone.
However, I do have a secondary interest in other languages that early sources can be found in - but I am afraid that I do not have the interest nor ability to learn those. However, I shall keep them in mind for now anyway.
Other early languages can be found here: What are all the languages that the early Buddhist/Dhamma-Vinaya textual sources can be found in? - #5 by Robbie
Can you advise me regarding how I can sufficiently prepare myself to learn relevant languages (particularly Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Pali) for a PhD program? How do I know I am sufficiently prepared.
I barely got any exposure at all to any of these languages in my Buddhist Studies master’s program? Any advice regarding sufficient language acquisition would be very much appreciated and helpful! Thank you in advance.
Note: I would pretty much be starting from scratch, but I do seem relatively mentally prepared as I have been thinking about starting for years. I do take (a lot of) time to warm up and begin, so this is not really unexpected or unusual for me as I need time to set up a realistic structure for myself so that I don’t waste time and am better able prepare as efficiently as I can. I remember that you gave some very solid advice regarding learning the three languages here: Learn Sanskrit, Prakrit, Pali - Resource Recommendations? - #3 by SeriousFun136