The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c6.s1.5

c6.s1.5

Here, however, enters one of the curiosities of Hindu religious life. The adherents of a certain Veda or Vedic school, no matter whether the text of that school was reduced to writing or not, must, in theory, know their texts by heart. These are the so-called Çrotriyas or "Oral Traditionalists." They live to this day, being, as it were, living manuscripts of their respective Vedas. The eminent Hindu scholar, the late Shankar Pandurang Pandit, tells us in the preface to his great Bombay edition of the Atharva-Veda how he used three of these oral reciters of the Atharva-Veda out of a total of only four that were at that time still alive in the Dekkhan; and how their oral authority proved to be quite as weighty as the written authority of his manuscripts. These living manuscripts were respectively, Messrs. Bāpujī Jīvanrām; Keçava Bhat bin Dājī Bhat; and Venkan Bhatjī, the last "the most celebrated Atharva Vaidika in the Dekkhan.” Mr. Pandit cites them by *sigla*, quite in the manner of inanimate manuscripts, respectively, as Bp, K, and V. They are, I believe, now all dead.