Trilingual inscription from Sri Lanka

[Ellen M. Raven]

Although I am away from Leiden this week and cannot check the Kern
Institute Library for the details of S. Paranavitana's original
thesis (which is there), I would like to point out:

- Paranavitana's doctorate at Leiden University was not an honorary
doctorate, but one bestowed on him after the public defense of a PhD
thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Leiden
University.

- This thesis consisted of the first four chapters of Paranavitana's
`The Stupa in Ceylon', which was published officially after the
second world war (1946) in the Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey
of Ceylon.

- In the preface to the published edition, Paranavitana
explains that he worked with A.H. Longhurst, then Archaeological
Commissioner of Ceylon, on the archaeological questions raised in his
work .
        In Leiden Prof. J.Ph Vogel supervised the final preparation of
the manuscript. A `Promotie Commissie' (a Committee of
Professors and other academic specialists installed for the
occasion) must subsequently have approved the thesis for public
defense,  but only  after its acceptance (as a scholarly study worthy
of defense for a doctorate degree) by Prof. Vogel.
        Acceptance of a thesis by a supervisor is not based on `admiration'
but on a motivated judgment that the thesis is a sound
scholarly piece of research (which may still be controversial in many
ways or for many reasons, and may vary in quality - between certain
margins -  like any other scholarly publication.

Ellen Raven
Kern Institute of Indology, Leiden University





> Date:          Mon, 26 Apr 1999 10:01:00 +0100
> Reply-to:      Indology <INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK>
> From:          Alvappillai Veluppillai <alvapillai.veluppillai at TEOL.UU.SE>
> Subject:       Re: Trilingual inscription from Sri Lanka
> To:            INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK

> I could say something about Paranavitana's scholarship.
> 1. I am aware that he has an honorary doctorate from Leiden, may be because
> Vogel was his admirer for some reason. Vogel could not have been his
> supervisor as Paranavitana did not work for his Ph.D. Without an
> undergraduate degree, good universities do not register candidates for
> Ph.D. Honorary doctorate can be conferred even without a basic degree.

> /A.Veluppillai
>

>