On the Reliability of Memory

When myths are written down, or printed by machine, errors and omissions are bound to occur.  These then get passed on, sometimes by the thousands (especially since the advent of the printing press and then, modern reproduction methods.) The sacred oral tradition, however, safeguards against this.  As, for example, in the case of much of Indian mythology.

The Rig Veda is the world's oldest collection of living sacred literature that is still chanted in the form of hymns and prayers.
It incorporates ancient India's traditions, deities and religious rituals but this is also part of the heritage of the whole human race. The Vedas are an important repository of ancient knowledge. The world view as expressed in the oral tradition of ancient Indo-european people is unique, and it has survived because it was transmitted accurately from one generation to another by word of mouth over 5, 000 years, and perhaps even millenia longer.

Naturally, people have asked the question whether there have not been error of addition or omission, interpolation and mutilation during this process of transmission. Friedrich Maximilian Müeller (1823-1900) was the German philologist and Orientalist who introduced to the West The Sacred Books of the East.

 In his book, India: What Can It Teach Us? he repeatedly emphasized the uniqueness of the Vedas (The Rig or Royal Veda is one of many; it is considered the oldest one.) and awakened interest in Indology among educated people. He wrote:

                             "Entirely by Memory: This may sound startling, but -- what will sound still more startling,
                             and yet is a fact that can easily be ascertained by anybody who doubts it -- at the present
                             moment, if every MS of the Rig Veda were lost, we should be able to recover the
                             whole of it - from memory of the Srotriyas in India. These native students learn the
                             Veda by heart, and then they learn it from the mouth of their Guru, never from a MS, still
                             less from my printed edition, -- and after a time they teach it again to their pupils." I have
                             had such students in my room at Oxford, who not only could repeat these hymns, but
                             who repeated them with the proper accents (for the Vedic Sanskrit has accents like
                             Greek), nay who, when looking through my printed edition of the Rig Veda, could point
                             out a misprint without the slightest hesitation.

                              “Of course, this learning by heart is carried on under a strict discipline;  it is, in fact,
                              considered as a sacred duty. A native friend of mine, himself  a very distinguished
                              Vedic scholar, tells me that a boy, who is to be brought up as a student of
                              the Rig-Veda, has to spend about eight years in the house of his teacher.
                              He has to learn ten books: First, the hymns of the Rig-Veda; then a prose treatise on sacrifices,
                              called the Brahmana; then the so-called Forest-book or Aranyaka;
                              then the rules of domestic ceremonies; and lastly, six treatises on pronunciation,
                              grammar, etymology, metre, astronomy, and ceremonial.

                              “These ten books, it has been calculated, contain nearly 30,000 lines, each line
                              reckoned as thirty-two syllables. “A pupil studies every day, during the eight years of
                              his theological apprenticeship, except on the holidays, which are called "non-reading
                              days". There being 360 days in a lunar year, the eight years would give him 2,880
                              days. Deduct from this 384 holidays, and you get 2,496 working days during the eight
                              years. If you divide the number of lines, 30,000, by the number of working days, you get
                              about twelve lines to be learnt each day, though much time is taken up for practicing
                              and rehearsing what has been learnt before.

                              "Now this is the state of things at present, though I doubt whether it would last much
                              longer and I always impress on my friends in India, and therefore impress on those
                              who will soon be settled as Civil Servants in India, the duty of trying to learn all that
                              can still be learnt from these living libraries. Much ancient Sanskrit lore will be
                              lost for ever when that of Stotriyas becomes extinct."

                                    source: Selection from Hindu Scriptures. Prof. G. C. Asnani, India as repeated at
                                               http://www.atributetohinduism.com/Trivia_II.htm.  Accessed Nov. 22, 2001.
 

• More about the reliability of the oral tradition.