The role of literacy in standardization.

Another prickly issue facing us here is that of the role of writing in the development of and transmission of great traditions. For years the existence of orally-transmitted bodies of literature in the Indian subcontinent has vexed westerners (though not South Asians) because it appears that ancient Indic texts were codified and transmitted without overt evidence of writing having been involved. By `writing' I (and others) mean specifically marks made on paper, leather, clay, stone, wood, palmleaves, or other materials, using styli, pens, or other markers, such that a visible record, however perishable, is left. Western scholars such as Goody (1986) have taken the position that codification and transmission of such great works as the Vedas simply could not have been possible without writing, so evidence to the contrary, such as the elaborate and complicated systems of memorization observable in traditional Sanskritic colleges, is dismissed. I have discussed this issue in a recent work (Schiffman 1996:171-72) and must concur with Staal (1986:27) that the Goody hypothesis is contradicted by the Indic evidence.

What may be the problematical issue here is that Goody and others make a distinction between writing/literacy on the one hand, and orality on the other, whereas the real distinction may be between writing (marks on surfaces) on the one hand, and literacy (including oral literacy) on the other. Whatever we are able to conclude, in India what seems to be thought to be necessary for standardization, or invariant rule-observation to occur, is that it be codified, by which is meant that eventually the `grammar' is recorded, in rhyming sutras, and memorized. In modern times these grammars were also written down, and are now found in `books'. The notion that a language might be codified without having been committed to memory in rhymed sutras is not a prevalent one, or perhaps even an acceptable one, in modern India, but the fact that a grammar may not in fact be written (i.e. marked on surfaces) is an ancient and acceptable state of affairs. In the case of Tamil, for example, the idea is that the grammatical rules existed a priori, and were taught to the Vedic sage Agastya by Murukan, the son of the god Siva who then taught `divine Tamil' to his disciples (Schiffman 1996:175). This accords nicely with the modern linguistic notion that structure is in the language, and must be discovered by the linguist (though the idea that Murukan might have some new ideas about SST, and would want us all to rethink his earlier lessons, is not so likely.)