Oral tradition versus Written text

As an Indian I give much more importance to oral tradition than written text.¹ At the same time in my personal view, I prefer to write down my thoughts rather than communicate in any discussion.  Because when we discuss so many counter views will come simultaneously and we may not have time to address them all.  Above all, unless we pay proper attention to listening to others, within a fraction of a second we might miss the point.  And lack of communication that too in an alien language (like English in my case) further complicates the communication.  Whereas when I write or read any written words, I can go back again and again in order to get the point clearly in the right perspective.  Having said this, I attest the importance of oral teaching to reading written texts.  The importance of oral teaching is highlighted by Robinson, comparing it with three traditions: Hindus, Islam and Christianity. And I share as I find it important to understand this counter view to Yancey’s point of reading (only) written words.  Before that let us read what Yancy has to say supporting writing:

…I saw that writing could seep into crevices, bringing spiritual oxygen to people trapped in air-tight boxes.

               I especially came to value the freedom-enhancing quality of the written word. Speakers in the churches I frequented could raise their voices! and play on emotions like musical instruments. But alone in my room, controlling every turn of the page, I met other representatives of faith—C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, John Donne—whose calmer voices traversed time to convince me that somewhere Christians lived who knew grace as well as law, love as well as judgment, reason as well as passion. I became a writer because of my own encounter with the power of words, and I gained hope that spoiled words, their original meaning wrung out, could be reclaimed.— Philip Yancey  ‘Recovering from Church Abuse’, in Soul Survivor, Galilee Doubleday, New York, 2001, p. 7 (Italics original)

But Robinson says [of course through writing]:

…Writing is for us reliable communication; speech is unreliable communication. If in doubt, we get it in writing.²

               Muslims, on the other hand, were always fundamentally sceptical of the written word.  ‘Language’, declares Ibn Khaldun, ‘is merely the interpretation of ideas that are in the mind…Words and expressions are media and veils between the ideas…. The student of ideas must extract them from the words that express them.’  Oral expression was crucial to success.  ‘But’, Ibn Khaldun goes on, ‘when a student has to rely on the study of books and written material and must understand scientific problems from the forms of written letters in books, he is confronted with another veil…that separates handwriting and the form of letters found in writing from the spoken words found in the imagination.’{Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History (trans. Franz Rosenthal, ed. N.J. Dawood, Princeron, 1967, p. 431}  To understand the words properly and to approach their meaning, the student must read them aloud.  So, as the Quran gained full realization only by being recited aloud, so too did the academic book give of its full meaning by being read aloud.  Muslims were always in doubt about writing. They got at the truth in speech.{Ibid., pp. 431-3}—Francis Robinson, ‘Islam and the Impact of Print in South Asia’, in Pp. 62-97, in, Nigel Crook, ed. The Transmission of Knowledge in South Asia: Essays on Education, Religion, History, and Politics, Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 67

….Although they {Hindu} had commanded the art of writing for more than two millennia, and used it for commercial or bureaucratic purposes, oral transmission was regarded as the only appropriate way of communicating holy words.  Graham tells us:

The ancient Vedic tradition represents the paradigmatic instance of scripture as spoken, recited word….Written texts have been used, certainly, but a text without a teacher to teach it directly and orally to a pupil is only so many useless leaves or pages…Knowledge or truth, especially  salvific knowledge or truth, is tied to the living words of authentic persons, not authentic documents…these living words can only be valid on the lips of one who has been given the authority from a valid teacher to use them.{William A. Grahma, Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Religion, Cambridge, 1987, 68, 74-5,}—ibid. p. 69

…As a direct result of the growing power of the visual media, Christianity became increasingly cut off from the oral\aural roots of its revelation.  For those able to ponder over revelation on the printed page, the Word could never be so dynamically and so sensually present as it had been when communicated by the voice of man alone.  For those who no longer needed to commit scripture to memory, the Word was never likely to suffuse the workings of their minds and to inform their daily speech and (p. 81) action as it was for those who have the word of God with them….—ibid. pp. 81-82

And Valluvar endorses this view when he said [again only through writing]:

கற்றில னாயினுங் கேட்க அஃதொருவற்கு
ஒற்கத்தின் ஊற்றாந் துணை.—குறள் 414

Though learning none hath he, yet let him hear alway:
In weakness this shall prove a staff and stay.—Kural 414

Although a man be without learning, let him listen (to the teaching of the learned); that will be to him a staff in adversity.

Mathigiri, 10-3-2020,

Notes

1 …I believe that it is fair, given the vagaries of cultural processes, especially in India, where oral tradition is often equal in authority to written text (even among elites), to suspend some of the basic requirements of classical poetics….— Frederick M. Smith, Deity and Spirit Possession in South Asia, Delhi, MOtilal Banarsidass Pub. Pvt. Ltd. (2006) First Indian edition, 2009, p.335

2…The learned man in old India was therefore the vaagmin, the master of speech, and not, as in Europe, the litteratus, the lettered man.– Sheldon Pollock, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India. Ranikhet, Permananet Black, 2006.  p.83. See further what Shulman says about this Indian tradition:

…The Mediterranean mode of writing things down on parchment or stone was clearly privileged throughout most of Western history. But in India we find, from early on, a far more dependable way of recording texts that matter—by inscribing them on the neurons of highly trained memorizers.  Huge chunks of text can be precisely transmitted by memory; and to this day we find this mode of recording and transmitting to be (p.88) privileged in various south Asian contexts (for example, in the teaching of professional musicians, who tend to abhor the act of writing).  The standard term for an “illiterate” in Sanskrit is niraksara–kuksi, literally, “one who does not have the phonemes in his belly.”  The belly is where they belong—not on palm leaf or birch bark. Knowledge should be kantha–stha, on the tip of the tongue (literally, the throat).

               I am not in any way trying to romanticize a notion of nongraphic literacy, but rather seek to give it its due alongside discrete forms of graphic literacy in the preservation of texts considered to be prestigious in ancient India….— David Shulman, Tamil: A Biography, London, The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2016, pp. 88-89