________________
800
JOHANNES BRONKHORST
LITERACY AND RATIONALITY IN ANCIENT INDIA
801
been preserved in this manner for countless generations without any deviation from the original.
Since Vedic memorisation plays a crucial role in some of the arguments to be considered below, I will cite a passage from the introduction to a recent book by K. Parameswara Aithal, who here describes what he has learnt by visiting numerous accomplished Vedic reciters. Aithal depicts the method of teaching in the following manner (1991:12):
In the early stages the procedure is somewhat like this. The young boys who have had their initiation (panayana), sit in front of the teacher after they have finished their purificatory baths and performed the daily rituals, etc. The teaching begins early in the moming soon after sunrise, with the chanting of the sacred syllables HARIH OM, as prescribed by the Veda-laksana texts. First the teacher recites each mantra, pida( quarter) by pada, and the pupil recites it three times immediately after the teacher. This pada by pada recitation is repeated twelve times. The same method is followed for the recitation of the halves of the mantra-s and for the full mantra-s. Usually one session lasts until one adhydya is completed. Altogether each mantra is repeated 108 times. The study of the pada, krama, jat, etc., is variously graded according to the ability of the individual student. The procedure is very strenuous and time-consuming and thus requires great patience. Since no material reward, nor any kind of professional prospect can be expected from such a study these days, firm faith in the spiritual efficacy and divinity of the Vedic Word is the essential prerequisite for such a rigorous course of study.
vital that these passages' words, pronunciation and scansion are all memorised absolutely accurately, and this cannot be done by reading books. [...] Only when a passage has been fully memorised does the teacher explain its meaning." In spite of this imposed discipline these traditional Agamas are not being preserved by an exclusively and uninterrupted oral tradition. The school just mentioned was founded in the early 1960s, and one of its teacher's concems is that many pupils forget much of what they have learnt after returning to work in their temples; not even the refresher courses run by the school can prevent this. It is not impossible that medical texts were memorised in a similar manner, whether with more success we do not know. One of them, the Sušrutasamhita, describes the process as follows: "At the time of study the teacher should teach the pupil according to his capacity pada, pada or sloka. And those padas, padas and Slokas should be arranged in order (?, kramena), and thus one should combine them one by one." This passage shows some similarity with texts describing the teaching of Vedic texts, but it is too short to derive definitive conclusions from it.
As stated above, not all memorisation in India is of the Vedic kind." Goody (2000:13-14) draws attention to a study by John D. Smith (1991) of the Rajasthani epic of Pabuji. Smith (1991:26) points out that the epic of Pabuji has "a degree of textual fixity that seems not to be known in other oral epic traditions", but this does not change the fact that the differences between the performances by different performers are considerable (pp. 25-26). Indeed, Smith is of the opinion that "[t]here is some reason to suppose that the epic as performed at the present day actually is more stylised, more 'flat', than at an earlier period in other words, that there has been an actual shift away from a differentiated
The existence of this unique form of Vedic memorisation, which is without known parallels elsewhere, appears to be uncontroversial among Indologists. It primarily concerns Vedic texts, and is not easily transferred to other texts, not even to other holy texts. This is illustrated by descriptions such as the one by C. J. Fuller, from which we learn (1984:138, cited Goody, 2000:17) that pupils at a school in Tamilnadu that is under the overall control of the Kanchipuram Sankarācārya's monastery learn passages from traditional Agamas "by memorising exactly the passages recited to them by their teachers. It is considered
9
Cp. Witzel, 1995:91: "We can actually regard present-day Rgveda-recitation as a tape recording of what was first composed and recited some 3000 years ago." Note however that Renou (1960:41 n.1) provides some information that surrests that writing the Veda was not altogether unknown in relatively early days: "La Pansiniya) Siksi 32 - Yajnavalkya] Si[ks] 198) (Ghosh, 1938:72; JB) moque les récitateurs qui utilisent un texte écrit, les likhitapathaka (en même temps que les anarthajña); la Narsadiya) Siksa) 2.8,19 s'élève également contre celui qui lit. Le (Mahabharata) 13.23,72 vulg. (= Mhbh 13.24.70; JB) juxtapose les vedundim lekhakih avec les corrupteurs (diisaka) et les vendeurs du Veda (vedavikrayin). Further passages that discourage the use of writing are referred to in Kane, HistDh II. p. 348-349.
Cp. Fuller, 1999:52: "In principle, the teaching method is entirely oral ...Nevertheless, students do have copies of the texts they are learning and rather like actors learning their lines--they often refer to the words on paper to help them memorise them. (...) All the gurus insist that oral instruction is indispensable and that memorisation is far more important than understanding. (...) [The students, mainly learn a series of relatively short passages from the manuals [...] of Aghorasiva or other preceptors (...)." Susrutasamhita I (Sütrasthāna), 3.54: (...) adhyayanakale siyaya yarhasakil gurur wpadiset pada půdam slokam vu, te ca padapada loka bhiyah kramennusandheyah, eva ekaikaso ghatayed Falk (2001:196) paraphrases and comments: "teaching proceeds either in pädas, half-stanzas of full stanzas depending on the capacity of the pupil. After that the taught portions are to be combined one by one. Unfortunately, the process referred to by kramena is not described in full." Scharfe (2002:261) translates te ca padapadasloku bhūyah kramenunusandhevih as "and these words, quarters and stanzas should be step by step paraphrased". For a study of a large number of oral epics in India see Blackburn et al., 1989.
11
