.-THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF ASIAN STUDIES

DEPARlMENT OF SOUTH ASIAN AND BUDDHIST STUDIES

ANNUAL REPORT 1981,

General Comments, Courses and Enrolments

The Department is concerned with languages and literatures of South Asia from the earliest times until the present. There is a three-year pass course and a four-year honours course for both Sanskrit and Hindi.

The three-year course in Sanskrit is devoted to the study of grammar and the reading of selections from the Epics and easy prose texts in the first year; the works studied in the second and third years represent a diversity of styles and subject matter. The four­year honours course includes the study of Pali, Prakrit, Vedic and more difficult philosophical and Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit texts.

Classical Tibetan was available as a half-unit this year and was attended by three students.

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25/1982

The aim of the Hindi course is to provide the student with the ability both to communicate in spoken Hindi - the official language of the Republic of India - and to read a wide range of material written in Hindi, including novels, newspapers and scholarly works, assuring the student of a strong background in the culture of Hindi­speaking people.

Urdu, the official language of Pakistan, is available to those students who have passed Hindi I and are concurrently enrolled in Hindi II (for Urdu I) and by students who have passed Hindi II, Urdu I and are concurrently enrolled in Hindi III (for Urdu II). Urdu is offered on a half-unit basis; this year two students elected to enrol in Urdu I.

The total enrolment as at 15 April 1981 stood at 42, with one Non Degree Non Examination.

Student Participation

The Departmental Committee is made up of an equal number of full-time academic staff and students. In 1981 that amounted to 5 academic staff members and 5 students. Discussion mainly centres on the method of assessment: the Hindi students prefer 40% for work done during the year, 40% for end-of-year examination and 20% for the oral examination. The Sanskrit students favour end-of-year examinations in combination with an assessment of their progress during the year.

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Postgraduate Research

As reported last year, Mr. H. Matsumura submitted his Ph.D. thesis and returned to Japan. It has now been confirmed that the degree of Ph.D. will be awarded to him.

Mr. Tso Sze-bong is now finishing the last chapter of his thesis on the transformation of the Buddhist Vinaya in China and hopes to submit it in the first quarter of 1982.

Mr. Hari Shankar Prasad has finished the draft of his thesis on 'Time in Indian Philosophy' and will submit it within the three years of his Ph.D. Scholarship.

Mr. Akira Saito commenced his Ph.D. scholarship on 31 June 1981. His topic of research is "Madhyamaka Philosophy".

Mr. John Jorgensen left for Korea in August; he will spend one year there, during which time his Ph.D. Scholarship is suspended.

Staff

Professor and Head of the Department

J.W. de Jong, Ph.D. (Leiden)

Reader

Luise A. Hercus, M.A. (Oxon), Ph.D. (A.N.U.), F.A.H.A.

Senior Lecturers

T. Rajapatirana, M.A. (Ceylon), Ph.D. (A.N.U.) R.K. Barz, B.A. (Arizona), M.A. (Chicago), Ph.D. (Chicago)

Senior Tutor

Y.K. Yadav, B.Ed. (Agra), M.A. (Aligarh)

Research-Assistant (part-time)

Mrs. S.M.M. Loofs, B.A. (A.N.U.)

Staff Movements

No member of the academic staff was away on 'outside studies' this year.

Staff activities and research.

Professor J.W. de Jong was invited to and participated in the International R~mayaQa Seminar, held on 8, 9 and 10 January in New Delhi (India) and also attended the International Editorial Committee meeting for the 'Inventaire raisonne des Etudes du Ramayapa' in Delhi on 11 January 1981.

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Professor de Jong accepted an invitation to act as Consultant for the Journal of the Tibet Society. He also signed a contract for the publication of a collection of his articlesand reviews on Tibetan studies with the Asian Humanities Press, Berkeley, in cooperation with Motilal Banarsidass, New Delhi. This book will be entitled 'Tibetan Studies' and will be the second volume of his Selected Studies, The first, 'Buddhist Studies', was published in the beginning of this year with a long delay, which was entirely due to the publishers.

Dr. Luise Hercus, in cooperation with Dr. C. Mayrhofer (Classics), has continued work on an Apabhramsa narrative text, the Kaha-kosu of Muni Sricandra. In the field of

0

Aboriginal Languages she worked on an edition of texts from the Lake Eyre region, has done field-work in the Maree area (with the assistance of an A.R.G.C. grant) and had continued assisting with the literacy programme for Wangumara at Bourke which has resulted in the publication of a small booklet to be used at Bourke High School.

Dr. R.K. Barz took part in February in the South Asia Workshop organised by the Research School of Pacific Studies with a discussion on the historical background to Abhimanyu Anat's novel Lal Pasina. In August he attended the NZASIA Conference at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand, where he gave a paper entitled 'Indian Immigration and Hindi Literature in Mauritius'. This paper is to be published in 1983 in a special issue of Pacific Quarterly Moana. On 15 October he gave a paper 'The Ramayana, a documentary evidence' for the South Asia Seminar series, jointly sponsored by the Department of Asian History and Civilisations and the South Asia History Section of the Research School of Pacific Studies.

On 2 June Dr. Barz gave a lecture on 'The Ramayana as a political and family epic' for Dr. C. Ifeka's class in Political and Economic Anthropology. In October he gave a talk on Hindu reincarnation at Daramalan College, and he gave a series of 6 lectures for the Religious Studies I class on the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, Orthodox Hindu Devotional Movements, and Non-Orthodox Hindu Devotional Movements, on the Hindu Temples and finally a talk on the Practice of Hinduism.

Dr. Barz continued to work with Dr. B. Millar of the Department of Engineering Physics of the Research School of Physical Sciences on the Devanagari Computer Programme.

Mr. Y.K. Yadav was invited to attend the SASA Conference at the University of New England in Armidale in August. He gave a paper on the teaching of Hindi at the A.N.U. He continued his research on the Great Andamanese language and is preparing the result of his research for publication.

Visitors

The Department was pleased to receive a visit in October by Dr. B. Sinha, Director of the Hindi Department of the Foreign Ministry of India. He was accompanied by Mr. Jain, first secretary of the Indian High Commission. Dr. Sinha spent one hour talking (in Hindi) with the Hindi I class. Dr. Sinha was visiting various centres around

-4- ~1982. • the world where instruction in Hindi is offered. His visit to our Department was reported in Shanti Dut, the Hindi newspaper published in Suva, on p. 3 of the 29.10.81 issue, under the title Vishva Hindi Samsar (All Hindi World).

It was good to see Michael Brand, a former Honours student in the Department, who is presently working towards a Ph.D. in Indian Studies at Harvard University. Mr. Brand gave a short talk to Hindi students on Indian studies at Harvard.

Other activities

Dr. Hercus and Dr. Barz, together with Dr. C. Mayrhofer of the Classics Department, participated for one hour each week in a staff seminar on the reading of Marathi. Dr. Barz and Dr. Hercus also took part each week in a seminar conducted by Dr. H. Koch of the Linguistics Department, the Faculties, dealing with the translation of Hittite legal texts.

The Department was fortunate in obtaining the assistance of Mr. B.B. Singh, senior librarian with the National Library of Australia, as part-time tutor in Hindi II and Hindi III.

Mr. R. Bar-Illan de la Plata successfully completed his B.A. (Honours) thesis on the Urdu poet Nazir. In the course of his honours work in this Department he benefitted from the help of Dr. J.T.F. Jordens and Dr. S.A.A. Rizvi of the Department of Asian History and Civilisations.

Publications

de Jong, J.W., Buddhist Studies. Berkeley, Asian Humanities Press. 717 pp.

Fa-hsien and Buddhist Texts in Ceylon, Journal of the Pali Text Society, vol. IX, 1981, pp. 105-116.

The Sanskrit text of the ~a9dantavadana, Indologica Taurinensia, vol. VII, pp. 281-297.

Review of Phyllis Granoff, Philosophy and Argument in Late Vedanta. Dordrecht, 1978. - Indo-Iranian Journal 23 (1981), pp. 63-65.

Review of Louis Ligeti (ed.), Proceedings of the Csoma de K8r8s Memorial Symposium. Budapest, 1978. - ibid., pp.75-79.

Review of Helene Brunner-Lachaux, Somasambhupaddhati, I-III, Pondichery, 1963, 1968, 1977. - ibid., pp. 159-161.

Review of Ludwik Sternbach, Unknown Verses Attributed to K~emendra. Lucknow, 1979. - ibid., pp. 161-163.

Review of Peter Thomi, Cuga+a. Wichtrach, 1980. - .!_bid., pp. 221-227.

Hercus, L.A.

Barz, R.K.

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Review of Mervyn Sprung, Lucid Exposition of the Middle Way. London, 1979. - ibid., pp. 227-230.

Review of Tibetische Handschriften und Blockdrucke, Teil 7. Beschrieben von Friedrich Wilhelm und Jampa Losang Panglung. Wiesbaden, 1979. - ibid., pp. 232-234.

Review of Heinz Zimmermann, Wortart und Sprachstruktur im Tibetischen. Wiesbaden, 1979. - ibid., pp. 234-236.

Review of Annemarie von Gabain, EinfUhrung in die Zentral­asienkunde. Darmstadt, 1979. - ibid, pp. 236-238.

Review of R.K. Heinemann, Der Weg des Ubens im ostasiatischen Mahayana. Wiesbaden, 1979. - ibid., pp. 240-242.

Review of Jose van den Broeck, La saveur de l'immortel (A-p'i-t'an Kan Lu Wei Lun). Louvain-la-Neuve, 1977. -T'oung Pao LXVI, pp. 277-283.

And many other reviews.

and Ian Mansergh, An Aboriginal vocabulary of the Fauna of Gippsland, Memoirs of the National Museum Victoria, no. 42, 1981, pp. 107-122.

'How we danced the Mudlunga': Memories of 1901 and 1902, Aboriginal History, volume four 1-2, 1980, pp. 4-31.

Translation and edition of three central Australian grammars, being volume 5 of The Diari by J.G. Reuther. Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Canberra, Microfiche no. 2.

'The Cultural Significance of Hindi in Mauritius', South Asia Journal of Asian Studies, N.S., vol. III No. 1. June 1980, pp. 1-13.

'Computer Assistance in the teaching of Hindi', Bringing computers into College and University teaching, edited by Allen H. Miller and John F. Ogilvie. Papers presented at a symposium held under the auspices of the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia, Canberra, 19.11.1980, pp. 25-30.

Review of Salim-al Din Quraishi and Ursula Sims-Williams, Catalogue of the Urdu Manuscripts in the India Off ice Library, London 1978, - Inda-Iranian Journal 23-1 (1981), pp. 71-72.

Review of 'Vom Blumenlager der Prinzessin Tschandrawati'. Indische Volkserzlihlungen aus Mauritius by Prahlad Ram­scharan, tr. into German by Margot Gatzlaff, Verlag Philipp Reclam Jr., Leipzig 1979. - Indian Ocean Newsletter, vol. 2 no. 1, June, 1981, p. 8.

'R.K. Barz. Publications', Early Hindi Devotional Literature in Current Research, edited by Winand M. Callewaert, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 1980, p. 4.

1 2 Subject Enrolled

as at 30.4.81

Sanskrit I 9

Sanskrit II 2

Sanskrit IIH 3

Sanskrit IIIH 1

Hindi I 10

Hindi II 8

Hindi III 2

Urdu I 2

Class. Tib.A 3

1 ABS/N

The Australian National University

DEPARTMENT OF SOUTH ASIAN AND BUDDHIST STUDIES ANALYSIS OF STUDENT PERFORMANCE

3 4 Sitting Wastage

7 3

7

8

2

2

5 Failure

6 7 8 Sitting High Dis- Distinction

tinction

2

1

1 1

1

7 1 3

8 3 2

2 1

2 2

9 10 Credit Pass

with merit

3 n/a

1

1

3

3

1

half unit only - results deferred till next year.

11 Pass

1 2 1 NDNE; 2 withdrew

Enrolled as at 30.4.81 Sitting Result

Final Honours 1 1 Hl Ph.D. (includes 1 under joint 4 see report.

supervision)

12 Fail

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