Rationale for a VM + compiler approach instead of an interpreter?

[Mayuresh Kathe]

Hello,

I have been reading up (a bit) on Perl6 and found most articles 
mentioning Parrot + Rakudo as the primary tools for development using 
the language.

Is there any rationale for going with the above approach instead of an 
interpreter based one?

Also, would there be community acceptance of an interpreter written in 
portable c89 for Perl6?

Best Regards,

~Mayuresh