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It is with great sadness that we
must inform you of the sudden and unexpected death on Wednesday 1st
August of Dr Primoz Pecenko, Senior Lecturer in
Eastern Religions and Co-Director of the Centre for Buddhist Studies
at the University of Queensland. Primoz was also an Executive
committee member of the Australasian Association of Buddhist Studies
(AABS), a friend to many of us, and an important contributor to our
organization.
Primoz,
who completed a Masters degree at Pune in India and a PhD at the
Australian National University,
was a major figure in
Buddhist Studies in Australia and his passing represents a great
loss to our discipline.
He and his wife, Dr Tamara Ditrich, with whom he shared the
positions at the University of Queensland, have worked tirelessly to
maintain Buddhist Studies at the University of Queensland and
to promote Buddhist Studies in Australia.
Primoz’s specialization was in Pali commentarial literature,
particularly the sub-commentaries (tikas), a field that has been
little researched. One of his major contributions to this field is
his edition of the sub-commentary on the Anguttaranikaya (Aaguttaranikayatika
3 vols. to date, Oxford: Pali Text Society, 1996, 1997, 1999). A
fourth volume was in progress. This represents only the second
critical edition of a Pali sub-commentary. Primoz also contributed
to our understanding of this class of Pali literature through
several important articles, including “Sariputta and his works”
(Journal of the Pali Text Society 23, 1997: 159–79) and
“Lanatthapakasina and Saratthamanjusa: The Puranatikas and the Tikas
on the Four Nikayas” (Journal of the Pali Text Society 27, 2002:
61–113). Primoz presented a stimulating paper in the AABS seminar
series on Pali commentarial literature, entitled “Pali texts and
their manuscripts: a case of ‘lost’ manuscripts mentioned in old
Pali bibliographic sources,” in April, 2006.
Many of Primoz’s
publications are in his native tongue, Slovenian. This includes
numerous Slovenian translations of Pali texts, such as the
Dhammapada (2001) and Milindapanha (1989, 1990), plus translations
of individual suttas, such as the Mahasatipatthana-sutta (1988).
At the time of his
death, Primoz was engaged in several important and interesting
research projects. One entailed editing a Pali commentarial text
that was previously thought to have been lost, but was discovered by
him in Burma. Apart from making this text available to scholars in
the form of a critical edition, this work promises to throw light on
the creation of commentaries, the nature of the commentarial
project, and other hitherto little understood aspects of this field.
Another research project entailed the study of the Kuthodaw Pagoda
Inscriptional Complex in Burma, which would have helped to establish
the relationship between this “edition” of the Pali canon and other
versions current in the Theravada Buddhist world. It further
promised to contribute towards our understanding of textual
authority in Buddhist communities. Primoz was also working on
Buddhist meditation in theory and practice and Pali bibliographic
texts.
Much of Primoz’s research was funded by grants from such prestigious
bodies as the Pali Text Society, the Australian Research Council,
and ANU and University of Queensland research fellowships.
At the University of Queensland Primoz taught Pali, Sanskrit, and
courses on Buddhism, Hinduism, and World Religion, and supervised
numerous postgraduate students including many international
students. He was well-respected and liked by his students and will
be greatly missed.
Primoz’s premature
death robs us of a
wonderful colleague, an admired teacher
and a great Pali scholar, who undoubtedly would have gone on to
improve our understanding of Pali texts, specifically Pali
commentarial literature.
The Executive Committee of the AABS would like to extend our
condolences to Tamara and Alexander, Primoz’s son. We wish them
strength at this difficult time.
Dr Mark Allon
Department of Indian Sub-continental Studies
University of Sydney
Please find attached printable PDF
version with diacritic marks. |