Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c14.19

c14.19

Although certain Hindu religious texts were written down in the Indian Middle Ages and later, the whole tradition of the Brahmans vehemently opposed this desecration of the holy word by committing it to the written form. Essentially the tradition was, and very largely still is, that of oral transmission from teacher to pupil, both of whom may be formally illiterate but have their powers of memorizing preternaturally sharpened by their very lack of contact with the techniques of reading and writing. Not long ago in Benares an illiterate Hindu priest appeared who dictated a very long religious work in verse, until then unknown and unrecorded, which on internal evidence of style and language belonged at least to the Middle Ages, since when it had been passed on orally through a certain line of priests.