Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c14.21

c14.21

This oral tradition in literature is, of course, by no means uncommon among illiterate peoples, and within the Indo- European group one can aptly cite the Celtic practice as recorded by Caesar in Gaul of the first century B.C. ‘It is against the principles of the Druids,’ he writes, ‘to commit their doctrines to writing ... During their novitiate it is said that they learn by heart innumerable verses.’ In the two illiterate peripheries of the Indo-European dispersal, in west and east, one sees the same technique of the oral transmission of sacred lore: a technique unnecessary, and so lost, in regions where writing had been acquired at an early stage.