110 Introduction to General Anthropology
186 Southeast Asian Civilizations ( and Asian Studies;= History 172) (Institutional History)
230 Sociocultural Anthropology
260 Peoples of the World: An Introduction to Ethnography
270 Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology
286 Southeast Asian Civilizations (History)
321 Social Anthropology
339 Anthropological Theory in Contemporary Perspective
370 Mind, Culture & Society
386 Peoples and Cultures of Mainland Southeast Asia
398K Peoples and Cultures of South Asia (india, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka)
439 Anthropological Theory: Form and Argumentation
450 Seminars, periodically, on such topics as: Algebraic Methods, Marxist Anthropology, Theravada Buddhist Religion and Society, Southeast Asian ethnography, Tibetan peoples and cultures
453 Formal Analysis of Kinship and other Social and Cultural Systems.
470 Mind, Culture and Society (Cognitive Anthropology
486 Peoples and Cultures of Mainland Southeast Asia
513 Kinship and Mathematical Anthropology
515 Peoples of South Asia
Occasional seminars and tutorials on: Buddhist Religion and Society, Tibet, Advanced Mathematical Anthropology
1963 The Structure of Chin Society. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Illinois Studies in Anthropology 3.(2nd, revised edition, 1981. Aizawl and
Calcutta: Firma KLM, for the Tribal Research Centre, Mizoram.
1967 Ethnic
Categories in Burma and the Theory of Social Systems, pp 93-124 in P.
Kunstadter, ed., Southeast Asian Tribes, Minorities and Nations, volume I.
Princeton University Press.
1967 Kayah Society as a Function of the
Shan-Burma-Karen Context, pp. 1-104 in J.H. Steward, ed., Contemporary Change in
Traditional Societies, volume I, Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
1970
Some Diachronic Rules of Burmese Phonology: The Problem of the Palatal' Finals,
pp. 1-34, Occasional Papers of the Wolfenden Society on Tibeto-Burman
Linguistics II.
1970 On Kachin and Chin Marriage Regulations. Man, n.s., 5:
118-125.
1971 Review of H.-D. Evers, ed., Loosely Structured Social Systems.
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies (Singapore) 2,2: 230-232.
1972
Doctrine,Practice and Belief in theravada Buddhism. Journal of Asian Studies
31,2: 373-380.
1973 Tibeto-Burman Syllable Structure, Tone, and the Theory of
Phonological Conspiracies. pp. 525-547 in B. Kachru, et al., eds., Issues in
Linguistics: Papers in Honor of H. and R. Kahane. Urbana: University of Illinois
Press. 1973 Prefixing, Voicing, and Syllable Reduction in Burmese, Studies in
the Linguistic Sciences 3, 2: 104-120.
1974 Prolegomena to a Formal Theory of
Kinship (with K.G. Witz), pp. 111-134 in P.Ballonoff, ed., Genealogical
Mathematics. Mouton: The Hague.
1975 Wolfenden's non-Pronominal a-Prefix in
Tibeto-Burman. Linguistics in the Tibeto- Burman Area 2,1: 19-44.
1976 On
Falsification and Science Again, Journal of the Steward Anthropological Society
8,1: 53-66.
1977 Kachin Social Categories and Methodological Sins, pp.
229-250 in W. McCormack and S. Wurm, eds., Language & Thought:
Anthropological Issues. The Hague: Mouton.
1978 On the Burmese Verbal
Expletive pa (öø), Papers from the XIth International Conference on Sino-Tibetan
Languages and Linguistics.
1978 A Brief Note on the Reconstruction of *ma÷ in
Tibeto-Burman. Studies in the Linguistic Sciences 7,2: 24-38.
1978 Symbols
and the Computation of Meaning, pp. 181-191 in D.B. Shimkin, S. Tax, and
J.W.Morrison, eds., Anthropology for the Future. Urbana: University of Illinois,
Department of Anthropology Research Series, number 4 (includes pp.259-265,
Symbolic Anthropology and the Psycho-Cultural Interface, Discussion and
Analysis).
1979 Aspects of a Formal Theory of Noun Classifiers. Studies in
Language 3,2: 153- 180.
1979 Who are the Karen, and if so, Why?, pp. 215-255
in C.F. Keyes, ed., Ethnic Adaptation and Identity: Karens on the Thai Frontier
with Burma. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues
(ISHI).
1979 Etymological Speculations on some Chin Words. Linguistics in the
Tibeto-Burman Area 4,2: 1-6.
1979 A Formal Theory of Kinship: The
Transformational Component (with K.G. Witz).Committee on Culture &
Cognition, UIUC, Report number 11.
1980 On the Vocabulary and Semantics of
'Field' in Therava-da Buddhist Society, pp.101-111 in J.P. Ferguson, ed., Essays
on Burma (= Contributions to Asian Studies 16),. Leiden: E.J. Brill.
1984
Remarks on Freedom and Bondage in Traditional Burma and Thailand. Journal of
Southeast Asian Studies (Singapore) 15, 2: 233-244.
1985 Cognition and
Computation, pp. 19-48 in Janet W.D. Dougherty, ed., Directions in Cognitive
Anthropology. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
1985 Ergativity and the
Nominal-Verbal Cycle: Internal Syntactic Reconstruction in Burmese, pp. 71-81 in
Arlene R.K. Zide, D, Magier and E. Schiller, eds., Proceedings of the Conference
on Participant Roles: South Asia and Adjacent Areas. Bloomington: Indiana
University Linguistics Club.
1985 Quantifier Floating in Burmese and Lushai,
with some Remarks upon Thai, pp.264-278 in G. Thurgood, J.A. Matisoff, and D.
Bradley, eds., Linguistics of the Sino- Tibetan Area: The State of the Art
(Pacific Linguistics C-87 ). Canberra: The Australian National University,
Research School of the Pacific.
1986 Missing Nominals, non-Specificity and
Related Matters. Studies in the Linguistic Sciences (Special number in memory of
T.M. Lightner, ed. by C. Kisseberth and M. Kenstowicz) 15,2: 101-121.
1987
Burmese Religion. in The Encyclopedia of Religion, edited by M. Eliade et al.
New York: Macmillan. Volume 2, pages 574 - 580.
1987 Monasteries, Palaces and
Ambiguities: Burmese Sacred and Secular Space. in T.N. Madan, ed. Anthropology
from Sri Lanka. Contributions to Indian Sociology 21,1:169 - 186. New Delhi:
Sage Publications.
1987 (Bailey, Jane Terry, and _____) Addendum: Some
Seventeenth Century Images from Burma. Artibus Asiae (Autumn) XLVIII,1/2:
79-88.
1989 Internal Inflationary Pressures in the Prestige Economy of the
Feast-of-Merit Complex: The Chin and Kachin Cases from Upper Burma. Pp.89-102 in
Susan D. Russell, ed., Ritual Power, and Economy: Upland-Lowland Contrasts in
Mainland Southeast Asia. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University, Center for
Southeast Asian Studies, Monograph Series on Southeast Asia, Occasional Paper
number 14.
1990 Outline of a Formal Syntax of Numerical Expressions, with
Especial Reference to the Phenomenon of Numeral Classifiers. Linguistics in the
Tibeto-Burman Area 13,1: 89-128.
1991 (Keller, Janet D., and _____) Complex
Concepts. Cognitive Science 15,2: 271- 292 (also accepted, in expanded form, by
Cambridge University Press, for a volume, edited by Pascal Boyer, on Complex
Categories. Also distributed by the Beckmann Institute, UIUC: Cognitive Science,
Technical report CS-91-07 (Language Series).
1991 "Empiricist Method and
Intensional Analysis in Burmese Historiography: William F. Koenig's THE BURMESE
POLITY, 1752-1819 - A Review article [a major state-of-the-art paper on the
subject] in CROSSROADS 6, 2: 7-120.
1992 'Chin' pp. 62-68 Encyclopedia of
World Cultures, Volme III, South Asia, ed. Paul Hockings. Boston: G. K. Hall,
for HRAF.
1993 'Kachin' pp. 114-119 Encyclopedia of World Cultures, Volume V,
East and Southeast Asia, ed. Paul Hockings. Boston: G. K. Hall, for
HRAF.
1993 Review of A. Ballim & Y. Wilks's 'Artificial Believers.'
American Anthropologist 95,1: 173-174.
1993 (Janet D. Keller and ___)
Computational Complexity in the Cognitive Modelling of Cosmological Ideas, pp.
74-92 in Pascal Boyer, ed., Cognitive Aspects of Religious Symbolism. Cambridge
University Press.
1993 The Relationship between Genealogical and
Terminological Structure in Kinship Terminologies, Journal of Quantitative
Anthropology 4: 95-122.
1995 Burmese to. and thei: Reconsidered as Second
Order Aspectuals. Proceedings of the Third Southeast Asian Linguistics
Conference [University of Hawaii], ed. Mark Alves. Tempe: Arizona State
University Program in Southeast Asian Studies, Pp.119-128.
1995 Can God be Coerced? — Structural Correlates of Merit and Blessing in Some Religions of South East Asia. Pp. 20-51 in Blessing and Merit in Mainland Southeast Asia in Comparative Perspective, edited by Cornelia Ann Kammerer and Nicola Tannenbaum. Yale University Southeast Program, Monograph #45.
1996 Problems for an Account of Mizo (and Lai Chin) Case Marking in Minimalist Syntax. pp. 43-58 in Papers from the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. Tempe: Arizona State University Program for Southeast Asian Studies.
1997 Relative Clauses in Lai Chin, with Special Reference to Verb Stem Alternation and the Extension of Control Theory. Linguistics in the Tibeto-Burman Area 19, 1: -58 (dated 1996)
1998 Notes on Lai Chin Personal Pronouns and Overt Case Marking. Studies in the Linguistic Sciences 27, 2: 81-86.
1998 On the Use of dah in Lai Chin and the Operator Syntax of Functors. pp. 211-232 in S. Chelliah and W. de Reuse, eds., Papers from the Fifth AnnualMeeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. Tempe: Arizona StateUniversity Program for Southeast Asian Studies..
2000 Burmese [a grammatical sketch] Pp. 105-110 in Fact About the World’s
Language Ed. Jane Garry and Carl Rubino. New York: H. W. Wilson.
Aspects of a Formalist Theory of Kinship: The Functional Basis of its Genealogical Roots and Some Extensions in Generalized Alliance Theory. Anthropological Theory 1 (2): 212-239 [Special Issue, edited by D. B. Kronenfeld]. Sage Publications
2002 (with David J. Herdrich) On the Relevance of Point Fields for Spatiality in Oceania. in a special issue, edited by G. Bennardo, Pacific Linguistics , special issue, 179-197 Canberra: Australian National University.
2002 Minimalist Inquiries, Larson Shell VP, and Object Agreement, with Remarks on Ergativity and Unergative 'Transitive' Clauses in Lai Chin. Papers from the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asia Linguistic Society. Tempe: Arizona State University Program for SoutheastAsian Studies.
2002 Number Marking in Lai Chin and its Theoretical Consequences. Papers from the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asia Linguistic Society. Tempe: Arizona State University Program for Southeast Asian Studies.(with A. Ceu Hlun)
2003 The Relevance of the Founders’ Cult for Understanding the Political Systems of the Peoples of Northern South East Asia and its Chinese Borderlands, pp. 15-39 in Nicola Tannenbaum and Cornelia A. Kammerer, eds. Founders’ Cults in Southeast Asia: Ancestors, Polity, and Identity,New Haven: Monograph 52, Yale University Southeast Asia Program.
2003 in the So-called Nominaliser naak in Lai (Hakha) Chin, with Remarks upon its Other Functions in Chin Languages and Its Etymology. Paper for the XIIth annual meetings of the Southeast Asia Linguistic Society. In press, Monograph series, Program for Southeast Asian Studies, Arizona state University, Tempe
2003 _____ and Giovanni Bennardo. A Computational Approach to theCognition of Space and its Linguistic Expression MACT [Mathematical Anthropology & Cultural Theory —a peer-reviewed -journal] Vol. 1, #2 (June), Pp.1-82 (+cover page).
2004 On the 'Globality Hypothesis' about Social/Cultural Structure: An Algebraic Solution. Paper for the Mathematical Anthropology panel, chaired by Dwight Read (UCLA) and M. Fischer, University of Kent at Canterbury (UK), at the 2004 European Meetings on Cybernetic Systems Research (EMCSR) at Vienna. (meeting and publication April, 2004)
2004 Zhú Qún Xìng Zhèng Zhì Yu‡ Zhoìng Mia‡n Biaìn Jiòng Maòo Yiò de Hu›› Do››ng Xi€ng Ta››i — Yiìgeì Reôn Zhiì Re€n Leòi Xue€ de Tia€€n Yi‡e Ka‡‡o Ca€ [‘Ethniicity, Politics and the Structure of Inter-Ethnic Relations in the China-Burma Cross-Border Trade: A Field Study from A Cognitive Anthropology Perspective’].Xiì N€an Biìan Jiììang Mi€n Zhu€€ Yiìan Jiuìì [Ethniic Studies on the Southwest Frontier]. Pp. 68-78., ed. Fang Tie. Kunming: Yunnan University Press.
2004 Review of Victor Lieberman [2003] Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800-1830, vol. I. CUP, IN Bulletin of Burma Research. London: SOAS.
2004 The Read-Lehman Letters o Vol. 1, No. 4n Kinship Mathematics. MACT
2005 Towards a Formal Cognitive Theory of Grammatical Aspect and its Treatment in Burmese. Pp. 125-142 IN Studies in Burmese Linguistics, ed. Justin Watkins. . Canberra: Australian N ational University, Pacific Linguistics.
2004 On the "Globality Hypothesis" about Social/Cultural Structure An Algebraic Solution. Cybernetics and Systems 36, 8 (Special Issue on Cultural Systems): 803-816
2006 Burmans, Others and the Community of Spirits. Crossroads 18, 1:127-132
2006 Cultural Models (and Schemata) and Generative Knowledge Domains and How They Are Related. Paper presented at the 2000 Annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association, panel on Cultural Models at http://real.anthropology.ac.uk
2007 (2006) Research Methods and Mathematical Anthropology: Prolegomena to The Logic and Place of Statistically Based Methods. Paper presented to the 2006 annual meetings of the Society for Anthropological Sciences.
2007 Remarks upon Ethnicity Theory and Southeast Asia, with Special Reference to the Kayah in Burma: Ethnic Diversity Past and Present., edited by Mikael Gravers,. Copenhagen: NIAS Press.
2007 Introduction: Notes on Edmund Leach’s Analysis of Kachin Societyand its Further Applications IN M.Sadan and F. Robinnne, ed.Reconsidering Political Leach. Leiden: Brill Handbook of Oriental Studies series, Section 3, South East Asia.
2007 Review of Hjorleifur Jónsson, Mien Relations, Journal of SoutheastAsian Studies
2007 Review of Nancy J. Eberhardt, Imagining the Course of Life: Self-transformation in a Shan Buddhist Community, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies.
My main research efforts are being devoted to mathematical anthropology, cognitive science, and linguistics, as well as to the linguistics of Burmese and of the Chin languages of the India-Burma borderlands (major Lai Chin trilingual dictionary project has now been given three years of Research Board sponsorship, and I am putting forward an application to NEH for its completion, with my Linguistics graduate student, A. Ceu Hlun), and the anthropology of the Chin peoples and of the complex of peoples involved in cross border ethnic and trade relations on the China-Burma border. This last work began in January of 1997, during my attendance in Kunming, Yunnan, PRC at an international conference, where I presented a major paper, long since published, after which my former student and late colleague, Dr WANG Zhusheng and I did pilot field work on the basis of which we are now planning a longer term field research there, with some funding already secured, partly in connection with the new exchange arrangement between his Yunnan University and our Center for East Asian & Pacific Studies. This work has now been resumed as of the Summer of 2001, under invitation from Yunnan University's Research Center of Border Regions and Minority Nationalities in Southwest Chin, with a year's field work to be begun in December, 2002. This involvement with field projects in Southwest China began with my Summer 2001 field work with graduate advisee LIU Tzu-k'ai among the Wa of that province. This Summer’s work was on the ethnography of the Wa of Yunnan, and especially their form of Charismatic Buddhism. Then, for eleven months of 2003 I did field work on the inter-ethnic cross border trade between China and Burma, mainly on th gem trade but on other aspects as well — mostly in Ruili, in Southern Yunnan, but also at Teng Chong and in Mandalay, Myitkyina and Lashio, in Burma. In the Summer of 2006, after presenting a paper at the 8th International Conference on Burma Studies at Singapore (which helped chair as Chairman of the Burma Studies Group of the Association for Asian Studies) I went back to Kunming and to Mandalay to arrange extensions of this work along other sections of that border, which is to be undertaken in the Summer of 2007.
My work, on the theoretical side, is chiefly in abstract algebra and the theory of quantification and this is applied both to linguistics and semantics and to the development of formal-intensional theory of cognition. Also, I am trying to work out a comprehensive view of Burmese social structure and cultural history as part of a larger view of (a) Theravåda Buddhist ideology and (b) the organisation of ethnic relations in South-eastern Asia. This takes into consideration both my own field materials and extensive translations. A monograph on kinship algebra, including the general theory of alliance and affinity, is actively contemplated, too. All this leads me to revise my major course lectures recurrently, and I consider my introduction to the curriculum of work on algebraic methods particularly important. I am likewise working actively in linguistics, both on the formal, theoretical side, mainly on syntax and semantics, and on Tibeto-Burman and Tai languages quite generally. It is my constant aim to try and interrelate all these interests and activities round the theories of cognition and artificial intelligence research; this is the focus, in particular, for relating my anthropology and my linguistics, and both to my substantive Southeast Asia interests, Burmese and other. I also keep up active interest in anthropological theory in general, and have done work in ethnicity theory and on symbolism, trying to put the study of them on a formal, abstract basis. Some of the most important results are the results of recent (1990-91) work with my Ph.D. thesis student, R. R. Sands, and the theoretical work on a comprehensive cognitively oriented formal theory of society, culture and ethnicity is now being put together by the two of us. For instance, my work on quantification in semantics, logic and mathematics has found important and far reaching applications in my work on formal syntax regarding the theory of Empty Pronominal Categories and related aspects of the theories of syntactic Government, Binding and Control. All these formal interests in cognition, quantification, syntax and semantics constitute the core of my current work, with Dr. Janet D. Keller, on our course, Anthropology 370, and our projected textbook on anthropological linguistics. Similarly, my work on the mathematical analysis of kinship and marriage structures has led directly to important results concerning so-called global structuring of social and cultural systems; this is central to my course, Anthropology 339, on Anthropological Theory and my advanced course on formal theory and kinship systems (Anthropology 453). I have also returned to the teaching of the anthropology of South Asia (India etc.) since the Autumn semester of 1994, and in 1995, teaching it again, I have worked with my now retired colleague H. A. Gould on his projected volume on the comparative study of systems of caste. This brings me back to my own comparative work on social stratification having to do with the category of sumptuary Estate systems, which began in my doctoral dissertation. My work on kinship mathematics remains very current (see my 2001 paper in Anthropological Theory); I am on 2 panels for the AAA meetings of November, 2001 and continue my collaboration in this line of work with, D. W., Read of UCLA, D. B. Kronenfeld of UC Riverside, and others and also in connection with the e-journal (refereed), MACT.
With the pilot field work of 1989-90 and with the arrival in this country of my long time Chin associate, Lian Uk B. A. LL.B., I returned to my research on the Chin and Mizo (Lushai) peoples of the India-Burma border; I am planning long-term field work there, and have again started writing and publishing on Chin language and ethnography. My paper (October, 1990), on the bearing of pilot work on the Lakher language upon the general theory of the syntax of agreement systems. With the assistance of the Burma Project of the Open Society Institute of New York (Soros Foundation), I have participated in two conferences (on in New York in the Spring of 1995, one in Washington D.C., in July) devoted to the salvage ethnography and cultural history by and for the use of the minority ethnic communities of Burma. I have helped organise this project in general, and, with Mr. Lian Uk, I am now putting together manuscript and video material from and on the Chin State of Burma for editing and archiving and eventual publication. In this connection I am also actively revising my basic ethnographic monograph on the Chin (1963) for republication, under an offer from White Lotus publishers, Bangkok.
My published paper on the descriptive and historical phonology of the Burmese dialects of Upper Burma is the result of my Spring, 1988 season in Mandalay. J. Fraser Bennett), who took his Ph.D. under me in Linguistics in the Spring of 1995, picked up on my own earlier work on the Red Karen (Kayah) language, and he and I and a colleague (Dr. D. B. Solnit) formerly at the University of Michigan, who has also worked on these dialects, have recently jointly renewed work on the Kayah, where Solnit and I did field work in the Summer of 1994. In addition, I returned then briefly to Burma to set up plans for long term field research on a possible dialect atlas of the Burmese language, and am preparing a research and funding proposal for that purpose at this time.
I was an invited participant in a panel on work in Kinship organised by my colleague, Professor D. Read of UCLA, for the 1995 AAA meetings on surveying kinship theory in general, and this work grows out of the co-operative work that Read and I continue to do towards a projected large conference and eventual published volume on kinship mathematics and related matters. I now (1997-98) have a small grant from the UIUC Graduate Research Board for furthering the computational part of this research, which now includes Dr. Giovanni Bennardo (with especial regard to Tongan data).
My work on the cognitive analysis of culturally distinctive constructions of space and spatiality continues apace. In November, 1997, at the AAA meetings, I presented a paper on point-field representations of space, with special reference to Polynesia (Samoa more particularly), and this is now being prepared for publication together with my pupil, David Herdrich, Government Archaeologist for American Samoa, on the basis of his rich ethnographic data collected for his dissertation on Samoan conceptions of space.
On my new work on the China-Burma border, see the opening lines of this section.
I have directed five Ph.D. theses in linguistics, over twelve in anthropology, including two at other universities (University of Chicago, SUNY Stony Brook), been on some two score of thesis committees in anthropology, linguistics, education-cognitive science, and other departments, and been external examiner for numerous theses, here and abroad (India: Gauhati, Calcutta, Australia: Sydney, Switzerland: Zürich, Denmark: Copenhagen).
My paternal family, Eurasians of Jewish extraction, have been merchants in India and Burma (first in the timber trade, subsequently the gem trade, for some two hundred years. I myself went from Calcutta, India, to Burma at about age four and was apprenticed in the gem trade at age fifteen, working in the area of Upper Burma, Northern Thailand and South Western China. I came to reside in the United States just before the Second World War, and after the war I enrolled in New York University, taking an honours degree in mathematics, social sciences and languages in 1950. I did my graduate study in anthropology and linguistics at Columbia University from 1950 to 1952, when my senior professor, Julian Steward, invited me to come to the University of Illinois, where he was helping to expand the anthropology program (then in the Department of Sociology). After a year and a half, I took up a post doctoral appointment to study South Asian languages and cultures and linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania during 1954-55, after which I was with the Human Relations Area Files at Yale University, working on the development of the Southeast Asian files, until 1956. At that time, having defended my doctoral thesis, I got a grant to conduct anthropological field research amongst the Chin people of the highlands of Western Burma for about two years in 1957 and 1958, having meanwhile returned to employment at the University of Illinois, where I have held academic appointments ever since. My Ph.D. was awarded in 1959 after my return from Burma. I have conducted major field research in Burma,Thailand and India over many years since then.
During linguistic field work in Mandalay, in the Spring of 1988, I spent a
month as a monk (with the monastic title of Ashin Kawithara) in
the Buddhist monastery to which we are attached there (Mahamyaing Kyaung Taik),
and where my wife (Sheila G. Lehman, a.k.a. Daw Mya Thwei) was installing a major stained glass window which she had designed for the Ordination Hall.
In recent years I have become increasingly active in Burmese expatriate politics on account of our opposition to the current military rule in that country where I grew up, with especial concern for the preservation and advancement of the cultures of the Chin, Shan, Kayah and Kachin minority peoples of Burma and for the reconstiution of the Burmese educational and intellectual community. I am an adherent as well as a scholar of Therava¯ da Buddhism. The languages I am most comfortable in are those with which I grew up, Burmese and English, and, of the languages I have used extensively in my field research, my greatest fluency is in the Hakha Chin language (Lai Holh), though I also speak Lushai, Southern (Mindat) Chin, Shan,Thai and Kayah, as well as some Southwestern Mandarin and Hindi, as well as the usual run of Western European languages. My 'classical' languages are Latin, Sanskrit and Pa¯ li (the scriptural language of Therava¯ da Buddhism). In the Chin languages, I am known commonly as Marki-pa ('father of Mark', the name in English of my eldest son, a.k.a. U Ngwei Thein - our younger son being Charles, a.k.a. U Aung Thein; both were born in Rangoon).My avocational and recreational interests are chiefly classical music (I had a very brief career as a concert and opera singer and choral conductor) and weight lifting. eational interests are chiefly classical music (I had a very brief career as a concert and opera singer and choral conductor) and weight lifting.