1859.] On the Introduction of Writing into India. 139 



be known,, the whole literature of India was preserved by oral tra- 

 dition only. 



It is of little avail in researches of this kind to say that such a 

 thing is impossible. We can form no opinion of the powers of 

 memory in a state of society so different from ours as the Indian 

 Parishads are from our universities. Feats of memory, such as we 

 hear of now and then, show that our notions of the limits of that 

 faculty are quite arbitrary. Our own memory has been systemati- 

 cally undermined for many generations. To speak of nothing else, 

 one sheet of the "Times" newspaper every morning is quite suffi- 

 cient to distract and unsettle the healthiest memory. The remnants 

 of our own debilitated memory cannot furnish us with the right 

 measure of the primitive powers of that faculty. Even at the 

 present day, when MSS. are neither scarce nor expensive, the young 

 Brahmans who learn the songs of the Veda and the Brahmauas, 

 and the Sutras, invariably learn them from oral tradition, and know 

 them by heart. They spend year after year under the guidance of 

 their teacher, learning a little day after day, repeating what they 

 have learnt as part of their daily devotion, until at last they have 

 mastered their subject, and are able to become teachers in turn. 

 The ambition to master more than subject is hardly known in 

 India. This system of education has been going on ever since the 

 Brahmana period, and as early as the Pratis akhyas we find the most 

 minute rules on the mnemonic system to be followed by every teacher. 

 The only difference in modern times, after the invention of writing, 

 is that a Brahman is not only commanded to pass his apprenticeship 

 at the house of his Guru, and to learn from his mouth all that a 

 Brahman is bound to know, but the fiercest imprecations are uttered 

 against all who would presume to acquire their knowledge from 

 written sources. In the Mahabbarata we read, " Those who sell the 

 Vedas, and even those who write them, those also who defile them, 

 they shall go to hell."* Rumania says "That knowledge of the 

 truth is worthless which has been acquired from the Veda, if the 



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