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This is not true. For example, in India the oral tradition has preserved texts like the Vedas as they were around 500BCE. This is in absence of any strong writt
by Ar-Curunir 2y ago
This is not true. For example, in India the oral tradition has preserved texts like the Vedas as they were around 500BCE.
This is in absence of any strong written tradition around these texts.
We know that the contents are preserved due to linguistic evidence.
- peterfirefly 2y agoAnd how much else was passed down orally in India? Not much. Imagine if all we had of ancient Greece were the Iliad and the Odyssey!
- Ar-Curunir 2y agowe have a ton of other texts, the Upanishads, the Brahmanas, the Aranyakas, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and countless more. I just listed the most famous other example.
- petesergeant 2y agoYes but most cultures don’t have a rote-memorization culture like the shruti, which seems very much like the exception
- AmericanChopper 2y ago> They are secondary sources that are usually used to preserve mythologies rather than histories. > This is not true. For example, in India the oral tradition has preserved texts like the Vedas as they were around 500BCE You could say the same thing for The Odyssey, or The Quran, which along with The Vedas, are all mythologies, not histories.
- Ar-Curunir 2y agoI was talking about the preservation technique, not the contents. There is not inherently anything preventing oral traditions from preserving historical events, just like theirs no guarantee that written texts capture only factual information.
- AmericanChopper 2y agoIf that were true then why have oral traditions only been used to preserve culturally significant mythologies? (and even then most frequently in form of a strict meter poem or song)
- Ar-Curunir 2y agoBecause they haven’t been used only to document mythologies. Indian oral traditions have recorded scientific texts, medical texts, political texts, and more.