A History of Indian Literature v2.c19.s3.t1.125

v2.c19.s3.t1.125

These continual repetitions of the same words, sentences and whole paragraphs had the double purpose of impressing the speeches more deeply on the memory and of making them rhetorically more effective. As texts written down and intended for reading, they would probably have been quite as tedious to the Indians as they are to the Westerner. In the recitation the repetitions played a considerable part “as parts of a purely musical construction” and proved no more tiring to the ears of a Buddhist audience “than the repetitions of the motifs in the musical compositions of Bach or Wagner.”¹ For this reason it is scarcely possible to translate these Suttas for Western readers exactly as they stand, with all the repetitions; but we must not forget that the Suttas were composed for Buddhist hearers, and not for Western readers.