I got really depressed this weekend listening to a “senior scholar” in the field of premodern Southeast Asian history give a talk. The speaker is very well published, and has been active for decades, but I found nothing that was new or insightful in anything that he had to say.
Why was this the case? The main problem is that the author does not use primary sources. He cannot read any Asian languages, and bases his scholarship largely on secondary scholarship in English. This places incredible limits on what he can do, and yet it has not stopped him from publishing extensively.
The situation of this one scholar is not unique. The field of premodern Southeast Asian history in the West suffers badly from a lack of scholars who can read primary sources in their original languages.
Sometimes people defend this sad state of affairs by saying that “oh, but there are so many languages. . .”
Yes, there are. But people who work on the classical period in Europe, for instance, have to learn multiple “difficult” languages, such as ancient Greek, Latin and Hebrew, and modern languages like French and German. . . so can’t historians who focus on premodern Southeast Asia learn at least one???
Others say, “oh but there are so few sources for premodern Southeast Asian history.” That is also false. There are thousands of classical Chinese texts and inscriptions in Vietnam that have not been examined closely. There are many palm leaf manuscripts in Northern Thailand, and plenty of manuscripts in the Thai National Library that scholars have not studied. Add to these the materials that exist in Sanskrit, Burmese, Lao, Mon and yes even Malay, and there is no excuse to not make use of indigenous sources.
Why don’t people use these sources? I think the simple answer is because it is difficult to learn to read a classical Chinese text or a Sanskrit inscription or a Northern Thai palm leaf manuscript. It takes many years of work, and rather than do that, many people chose to focus on something like. . . trade, the topic of the talk this weekend. After all, it’s a lot easier to count how many ships arrived in a certain place than it is to try to determine how someone in the past thought.
But the result of this “taking the easy way” was on full display this weekend as this senior scholar talked about. . . nothing.
The first Europeans who studied about Southeast Asia did tend to have good linguistic skills, and they also relied on the assistance of indigenous scholars. Therefore, scholars like Henri Maspero and Georges Coedès were able to produce information based on classical Chinese texts and Sanskrit inscriptions, respectively.
However, people like that just produced what we might call “preliminary knowledge” about the region. Everything they did needs to be revisited. But very few people have done so, because so few people have acquired the linguistic skills to do so.
I think there was some hope when the field of Southeast Asian history took off in the US in the 1960s. People like Craig Reynolds, Reynaldo Ileto and Barbara Andaya did produce work based on indigenous materials at that time, but these efforts did not get sustained.
Instead, we’ve seen the rise of great “synthesizers” who tie together all of the work that has already been produced so far, that is, people like Anthony Reid, Kenneth Hall and Victor Lieberman.
The problem is that they are “synthesizing” work that is still “preliminary.” For many topics we only have a single study. What if that study is not accurate or is biased by a certain perspective? How can one build upon a single study like that?
The result of these developments is that the knowledge that is getting produced about premodern Southeast Asian history is becoming increasingly superficial, and increasingly distant from the sources and past realities.
Making everything even more depressing is that there are now people from the region who likewise do not have the linguistic skills to engage in primary source research, and they are now discovering the “expert knowledge” of the figures who created the field of Southeast Asian studies in the West and are taking this knowledge seriously.
Rather than believing the Anthony Reids and Kenneth Halls, people should do what those scholars can’t do – read primary sources from the region in their original languages – and come up with their own ideas based on what they find in primary sources, and through their critical reading and interpretation of primary sources.
Of course there are some people who do this. This recent work on sources about Sipsong Panna by Foon Ming Liew-Herres, Volker Grabowsky and Renoo Wichasin is a good example. But works like this are far and few between.
Meanwhile, we have many superficial works based on secondary scholarship. And having heard that talk this weekend I can report that one more is on the way.
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The declaration of scholarship: very crucial and perhaps controversial. The usage of original texts is undoubtedly indispensable. However, synthesisers have their own view of standing in the field. Historian has different ways to make contribution to promote understanding the past and other can feel free to challenge their ideas. Anyway, great gratitude to take your side here, very inspiring.
Let me offer a specific example. Keith Taylor’s “The Birth of Vietnam” is a biased and problematic work. Taylor himself recognizes this. He no longer agrees with what he argued in that book, but he has not produced any scholarship to “correct” what he wrote there. No other scholars have produced anything to provide a less biased picture of that period either. So pretty much the only detailed work in English on “Vietnam” up to the 10th century is a work which, if you can read the primary sources that is is based on, you can find a great deal of information that is not accurate.
If you cannot read the primary sources that it is based on, then you cannot see where the problems in the work are.
So how can a synthesizer make a contribution by building on such a work?
Synthesis works in fields for which there are multiple studies on the same topic. One can synthesize information on various topics in European history because there is enough scholarship on given topics that an educated reader can get a sense of what is agreed upon and what isn’t.
When all that exists is one study, then it becomes very difficult for a synthesizer to use that work to make a contribution. And when that one study is biased or is based on poor scholarship, then it becomes all but impossible to use such a work to make a contribution.
Keith Taylor’s work is not an exception. There are many works like that in the field of premodern Southeast Asian history. Much of the field is far too undeveloped to support synthesis.
By chance I just came across an even better example. I’ve pasted below the table of contents for the Fiftieth Anniversary Volume of the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, a journal published by the University of London.
1967 was the 50th anniversary of this journal, and in this issue, Ralph Smith (who could not read Hán) introduced to the English-reading world the “Sino-Vietnamese sources for the Nguyễn period.”
At that time, the first scholars in the English-speaking world to use such sources were at work, namely Alexander Woodside and John Whitmore. Woodside’s dissertation became a book in the 1970s, but Whitmore never published his dissertation. Then in the 1970s, Keith Taylor wrote his dissertation which he then published in the 1980s.
The 1980s was when scholars like Anthony Reid and Kenneth Hall produced works that were based on the scholarship of people like Woodside, Whitmore and Taylor.
So premodern Vietnamese history was basically “unknown territory” in the 1960s in the English-speaking world, and somehow by the 1980s three or so scholars had produced scholarship that was so solid that it could be employed by “synthesizers”???
Take a look at the other articles in this issue. At the time that Ralph Smith was simply introducing the existence of Vietnamese sources, there were people who already knew such languages as Babylonian, Sogdian, Parthian, Kasi, White Miao, Cushitic. . .
This is a good example of how young the scholarship on Southeast Asia is in the English-speaking world. Some people who work on Southeast Asia act as if they were working in a field that is as developed as some other fields, but it is not. The basic groundwork that is necessary for a field to take shape still has a long long ways to go.
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Vol. 30, No. 3, 1967
Fiftieth Anniversary Volume
A Late Babylonian Tribute List?(pp. 495-504)
D. J. Wiseman
Le verbe iranien “nam”- en sogdien(pp. 505-511)
E. Benveniste
A Parthian Amulet(pp. 512-525)
A. D. H. Bivar
Purūravas and Urvaśī(pp. 526-547)
J. C. Wright
A Joint Petition of Grievances Submitted to the Ministry of Justice of Autonomous Mongolia in 1919(pp. 548-563)
C. R. Bawden
Vowel Length and Vowel Quality in Khasi(pp. 564-588)
Eugénie J. A. Henderson
Tone-Change and Tone-Shift in White Miao(pp. 589-599)
G. B. Downer
Sino-Vietnamese Sources for the Nguyễn Period: An Introduction(pp. 600-621)
R. B. Smith
The Coming of the Fulani: A Bachama Oral Tradition(pp. 622-633)
J. Carnochan
Ṣanhājah Scholars of Timbuctoo(pp. 634-640)
H. T. Norris
The Anglo-Ethiopian Treaty of 1902(pp. 641-654)
Edward Ullendorff
Fringe Cushitic: An Experiment in Typological Comparison(pp. 655-680)
A. N. Tucker
Thanks, I do agree that pre-20th Vietnam can not be understood properly if one could not directly deal with stuff in Sino-Vietnamese (even have master it). In the last four decades I would say, scholarship in VN basically was not be trained or encouraged to go in this way. Thus, once again, Quoc Ngu + national historiography reinvented a new past. I understand well your point here and definitely there is no excuse at all to escape from that fact.
Just when we think things can’t get worse, they CAN. From what I hear, many positions in Southeast Asian departments originally occupied by (retiring) premodern scholars have been replaced by younger academics in the modern and contemporary due to the lack of eligible candidates. In this case, there isn’t even the need to justify the ignorance of and disinterest in premodern thought anymore, and we end up with more “experts” raving about modern and contemporary Southeast Asia as if these were fictitious tales divorced from history, with no precedence, born of nothingness or having arisen miraculously from some lotus like Padmasambhava (for whom they’re not likely care).
A d.i.s.a.s.t.e.r. of which I am not innocent.
Actually yea, I think this is a trend. I see more and more places hire people who do stuff like media studies. So from deciphering Sanskrit texts to watching movies. . . “scholarship” has come a long way. . .
Yes, long, long way. There’s a lot of trash. And not just in the oceans.
The cult of the ersatz, the mirage and the spectacle. If only Guy Debord weren’t right.
yea, if only such theorists could have seen the Internet/iphone age. . .
I think another reason pre-modern Southeast Asian history is neglected by many English speaking academicians is not only the inability to read classical languages, but also the inability to read modern languages as well. Take Cham studies for instance, almost all major books, journal articles and monographs are exclusively written in French (and most are published by École française d’Extrême-Orient), Academicians who cannot read French must rely on the translated works of Maspero and Cœdès, which now are rather dated. Many other works on Cham and Champa produced by Étienne Aymonier and Antoine Cabaton (though dated but still important) remain untranslated. A few years ago Anne-Valérie Schweyer had translated the Nha Trang inscriptions of Po Nagar and was published in Aséanie. To my knowledge, there is no recently published English translations of Cham or Sanskrit inscriptions related to the history of Champa. And this is not just pre-modern history of Cham and Champa. In the recent decades French speaking scholars have produced works on recent Cham history as well. This was initiated by Po Dharma with his works on the history of Panduranga/Pradara in the 18th and 19th century, specifically on the revolts of ethnic Cham like Katip Sumat and Ja Thak Va against the Vietnamese rule. Po Dharma also translated two modern Cham manuscripts into French, and was published by EFEO. Then few years ago Nicolas Weber had translated Ariya Tuen Phaow, a poem on a Cham-Malay noble during the Tây Sơn period, again in French. From Aymonier’s Grammaire de la langue chame to Gérald Moussay’s Grammaire de la langue cam, there is no Cham grammar book published in English for learners of Cham language. Without the knowledge of French, academicians cannot tap in the wealth of information on Cham and Champa. So, a Southeast Asian historian should have at least working knowledge on some modern languages as well as competency in certain classical languages.
Thanks for saying this. I completely agree with you, and recently I have been thinking about precisely what you talk about here. These days with things like “google translate” I think some people think that it is not necessary to learn French. But google translate only gets you maybe 60% of the way. It is not the same as knowing French. Having a solid knowledge of French is still important for many topics.
In some universities, competency of French or/and German is required for courses like egyptology. If only similar requirement is imposed on Southeast Asian studies.
Liew-Herres, F. M., November 14, 2012
I do agree that to be able to make use of sources directly are very important to historians; but synthesis works based on well annotated and accurately translated sources cannot be neglected as well. A single scholar cannot master all the languages, classical and modern, that are pertinent to his/her researches in one life no matter how hard working he/she is. Take for instance, until one has mastered modern Chinese, classical Chinese (one has to start learning very young, like learning to play violin or piano, the best start at 5 or 6), English, German or French, one is already old. Thus scholars in the field of pre-modern Southeast Asia or China have to cooperate. One does what one can do the best; those who can translate old sources, translate for those who can synthesize and interpret.
I agree, but how many “accurately translated sources” are out there for premodern Southeast Asian history?
And I agree that classical languages take a long time to learn, but how many people working on premodern Southeast Asian history today know ANY classical language? Who are the great Sanskritists? For Pali you have a few, such as people like Peter Skilling. Classical Chinese? Old Javanese? Old Khmer? Old Mon?
In the case of Vietnam, graduate students in Vietnam who study history do not learn classical Chinese even though probably over 90% of the pre-20th century sources are in classical Chinese. (they study Chinese for a year or something like that .)
The fact of the matter is that it is very common in many fields of history for people to have to learn multiple languages. Why is this not the case for premodern Southeast Asian history?
If that was required for Southeast Asian history, then I think there would be a number of “accurately translated sources” as well as strong studies based on primary sources that people could build on.
As is, there are very few accurate translations, and there are numerous studies that are problematic, and yet people go ahead and “synthesize.”
Finally, I don’t think some should translate and others synthesize. In Vietnam, for instance, the people who do learn to read classical Chinese tend to translate. They don’t interpret. Historians then are supposed to be the ones who use the translations to interpret, however this has created enormous problems because if you can’t read the originals, you can’t really understand the translations.
People who know classical Chinese in Vietnam (the field of Han Nom studies) have pointed this out to me numerous times.
Liew-Herres F. M., Nov. 27, 2012
Translation is not an easy job. It does not mean that when one can read Classical Chinese, then one is able to translate it, into, for instance English, well. One must master Classical Chinese and English equally well and know the subject one translates.
Take for instance the translation of Classical Chinese into English, if the translator is a native speaker of English he/she can also ask a native speaker of Chinese who has mastered the Classical Chinese from young and has a good knowledge of English to check if the translation is faithful to the original text or not. If the translator is a native speaker of Chinese he/she should ask a native speaker of English, who does not know any Chinese, to read if the Classical Chinese rendered into English is still understandable or not. I think the same procedures are valid for the translation of other classical Asian languages into modern European languages, check and correct several times. It involves a lot of work until a good annotated translation is produced.
Once my old professor wrote to me while I was writing my dissertation: “Please be very careful with the translations. All translations have to be exact and at the same time in well intelligible English. This is not always easy. The best way is to copy the text to be translated by hand and punctuate the unpunctuated texts carefully; read it several times and then translate and check the translation and improve it several times.” My old professor also told me that translation from Chinese into English is, as a rule, easier than into German, even for him, German being his mother tongue.
A translator of a classical language into a modern European language is confronted with two different languages and cultures. How to render it as faithful to the original text as possible in another language is an art. Many years of learning and training are required. A careful and faithful translation with extensive annotations perhaps can avoid “… if you can’t read the original, you can’t really understand the translations.”
During my time in Penang we started learning Classical Chinese in the first year of secondary Chinese school, i.e., at 13/14 years old, compulsory. After learning six years every day with a lot of memorisation yet not all of us had mastered the written classical language. How many schools still offer classical languages nowadays? In Hamburg only a few Gymnasiums (humanistic/classical secondary schools) offer classical languages (Latin and old Greek).
To produce a pre-modern Southeast Asia historian armed with classical languages and multiple modern European languages we need to begin in secondary schools. It takes several decades to train one. However, this difficult profession is not as lucrative as other professions. This is perhaps another reason for our lament!
I agree with what you say, but at the same time I see fewer and fewer people making the effort to learn languages, when in many ways it is getting easier to do so.
When mainland China was “closed” in the 1960s and 1970s, there were a good number of people from North America who studied in HK or Taiwan, and who also spent long periods of time in Japan where they studied Japanese and worked with Japanese experts on Chinese history, religion, etc.
I commented positively in a recent post an an article that Alexis Sanderson wrote about Saivism in Cambodia. His webpage says that “Alexis Sanderson spent six years in Kashmir, studying with a scholar and traditional guru of Śaivism.”
How many people do things like that these days?
Even without doing stuff like that, there are so many more resources for learning languages that are available today that were not available a couple of decades ago.
Liew-Herres, F. M., November 28
Perhaps we shall find out the reasons why fewer and fewer people making the effort to learn more languages and why annotated translations of important old indigenous or contemporary sources are far and few in between numerous superficial works based on secondary scholarship. In the case of historians engaging in pre-modern Southeast Asian history how many of them are adept at reading at least one of the classical languages of the regions, such as Sanskrit, Chinese, Javanese, Khmer, Mon, Tai, etc. I gather from your comments that there are not many of them left. I suppose such multilingual historians capable of linking Europe and Asia linguistically are rather old now. How are we going to encourage younger historians of pre-modern Southeast Asian history to learn at least one of the classical languages pertinent to their studies before it is too late. I don’t think that historians of the younger generation are just lazy to learn languages. There must be some reasons behind. How to encourage those who have mastered one of above-mentioned classical languages to translate, at least the more important rare sources, either into one of the European languages, or transcribed them into the modern languages of their regions before they are too old or sick to do so. How to make the profession of a historian of pre-modern Southeast Asian history more attractive, etc. etc. To produce a good multilingual historians of pre-modern China or pre-modern Southeast Asia to me is like training a top pianist or violinist. If you read the biographies of such musicians you will know that their parents play an important role in cultivating them starting from tender age, under favourable conditions, apart from the aptitude of the child or the student. If the profession a historian of pre-modern Southeast Asian history were as attractive as a top German football kicker, there might be more such multilingual historians. Multilingual historians need favourable conditions.
One of the difficulties of working in Britain, is that they are deeply allied to Russian sources and bibliography, and the ambition of text. Overt references to French rule is tantamount to a Communism that betrays the author his authority when a dated French resource cannot. The plural source of government is perhaps a convenience of the present-day, although Vietnamese sources, to play the drag, are blatantly Chinese and ethno-indigenous for the modern scholar working on government redemption or the mere guilt of assertion of a Southeast Asian history. I welcome anyone to try extending civlisation beyond its Taoist boundaries into colloquia that are preserved by the family and Buddhist leadership in this modern time.