Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sacred scripture lives and evolves, is never fixed

lithub.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–18 of 18 posts

Re: Sacred scripture lives and evolves, is never fixed

#11

Post by carapace »

> The earliest of these hymns had been disclosed to seven great rishis (“seers”) in the remote past and transmitted with impeccable accuracy by their descendants. In seven priestly families, each generation had memorized the hymns of their inspired ancestor and passed them on orally to their children. Even today, when their ancient Sanskrit is well-nigh incomprehensible, these hymns are still recited with the precise tonal accents and inflections of the original, together with ritually prescribed gestures of the arms and fingers.

Purely from an information-transmission POV this feat is fascinating. Does anyone know where more information can be found about this?

Re: Sacred scripture lives and evolves, is never fixed

#12

Post by KorematsuFred »

trianglem wrote: post #5

Hasn’t the Koran been static since it’s inception?

Depends on how you define inception. Muhammad himself was illiterate so the job of writing down came to his followers. Many of them wrote on parchments which were kept in random order. Over years people added more parchments to the pile. Soon there were several hundred versions of koran. I think Muhammad's third generate Khalif managed to create one "authentic" koran and burned all other versions.

Re: Sacred scripture lives and evolves, is never fixed

#13

Post by KorematsuFred »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #10

This article is just wrong. First, there were no Aryans in the Steppes; only Proto-Indo-Europeans. A branch of PIEs migrated south and southwest, and ended up in Iran and India. This branch is called the Proto-Indo-Iranians, or the Aryan branch of PIEs. This happened some time before 1500 BCE, because we have evidence of Vedic gods in things like the Mitanni treaties. Regarding the point about Aryans not caring about…

There is no caste system in vedic system ! Caste is relatively very modern. It is a well established fact.

Re: Sacred scripture lives and evolves, is never fixed

#14

Post by svat »

carapace wrote: post #11

> The earliest of these hymns had been disclosed to seven great rishis (“seers”) in the remote past and transmitted with impeccable accuracy by their descendants. In seven priestly families, each generation had memorized the hymns of their inspired ancestor and passed them on orally to their children. Even today, when their ancient Sanskrit is well-nigh incomprehensible, these hymns are still recited with the precise…

I don't know much, and sorry for a terse repl (If I try to write out proper sentences and look up references this may take me more time):

- You can search for comments by modern scholars about it; e.g. search for [witzel "tape recorder"] on the web / in Google Books to find some quotations of a memorable analogy.

- You should find some material online in connection with "The Tradition of Vedic Chanting" being part of UNESCO's "intangible cultural heritage" lists / "Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity". I believe there were some documentaries produced. haven't looked closely but these sites look related: https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/tradition-of-vedic-chanting-000... / http://vedicheritage.gov.in/vedic-chanting-unesco/

- There's some good information on the Wikipedia article at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vedic_chant&oldid... e.g. for every string of the form "abcd..." one learns not just "abcd..." but also "ab bc cd..." and "abbaab bccbbc cddccd..." and some learn even more dizzying schemes.

- There are some documentaries on these schools, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FxYydNlrFk (there are a few more longer ones).

Re: Sacred scripture lives and evolves, is never fixed

#15

Post by carapace »

svat wrote: post #14
carapace wrote: post #11

> The earliest of these hymns had been disclosed to seven great rishis (“seers”) in the remote past and transmitted with impeccable accuracy by their descendants. In seven priestly families, each generation had memorized the hymns of their inspired ancestor and passed them on orally to their children. Even today, when their ancient Sanskrit is well-nigh incomprehensible, these hymns are still recited with the precise…

I don't know much, and sorry for a terse repl (If I try to write out proper sentences and look up references this may take me more time): - You can search for comments by modern scholars about it; e.g. search for [witzel "tape recorder"] on the web / in Google Books to find some quotations of a memorable analogy. - You should find some material online in connection with "The Tradition of Vedic Chanting" being part of…

Thank you very much, I really appreciate it.

Re: Sacred scripture lives and evolves, is never fixed

#16

Post by dawg- »

carapace wrote: post #11

> The earliest of these hymns had been disclosed to seven great rishis (“seers”) in the remote past and transmitted with impeccable accuracy by their descendants. In seven priestly families, each generation had memorized the hymns of their inspired ancestor and passed them on orally to their children. Even today, when their ancient Sanskrit is well-nigh incomprehensible, these hymns are still recited with the precise…

They are generally more well-known so you might have heard of them already, but you might be interested in reading up on the tradition of the Griots in west Africa. Similarly to this example, it's oral tradition as a "family business" that is passed down through generations

Re: Sacred scripture lives and evolves, is never fixed

#17

Post by dawg- »

xamuel wrote: post #4

>The Aryans seem unlikely producers of a holy scripture, since their lives were not what we would call devout. I wonder where this idea comes from that only devout people can be inspired. People are shocked when they pick up the Old Testament and read about (e.g.) Abraham pretending his wife is his sister so a rival king will take her into his harem. Jesus said: who would love you more, a man whom you forgave a $5 de…

>If you went to a physical therapist and he told you to move your tongue/lips/lungs in certain specific motions, which happened to produce noises, you wouldn't judge the exercise by the semantic content of those noises.

So the brain actually does have a special motor planning area for speech movements that is intermeshed with all the other parts of our language system, including semantics. As an example, when people have Apraxia (loss of coordination) they can have two different kinds, depending on where the lesion is: oral apraxia (loss of ability to move the jaw/tongue/cheeks/lips in NON speech tasks) or verbal apraxia (loss of coordination specifically for articulation movements). You are on to something interesting with your comment about "low-level tongue movements" vs. movements associated with communication.

I wonder what an fMRI would look like on someone reciting these Vedic hymns (in a language they do not fully possess) vs. someone reciting hymns in their native language? And what if you had an English-speaking Christian recite hymns in another language they don't know, like German or Latin or Greek?

Re: Sacred scripture lives and evolves, is never fixed

#18

Post by carapace »

dawg- wrote: post #16
carapace wrote: post #11

> The earliest of these hymns had been disclosed to seven great rishis (“seers”) in the remote past and transmitted with impeccable accuracy by their descendants. In seven priestly families, each generation had memorized the hymns of their inspired ancestor and passed them on orally to their children. Even today, when their ancient Sanskrit is well-nigh incomprehensible, these hymns are still recited with the precise…

They are generally more well-known so you might have heard of them already, but you might be interested in reading up on the tradition of the Griots in west Africa. Similarly to this example, it's oral tradition as a "family business" that is passed down through generations

Cheers! I hadn't heard of them.
Post reply on HN