Evils of Written Vedas?

[Vishal Agarwal]

----Original Message Follows----
From: George Thompson <GthomGt at CS.COM>
As for the evils of written vedas, Richard Salomon, in his *Indian
Epigraphy*
[p.7] cites the following proverb:

pustakasthA tu yA vidyA parahastagataM dhanam

["Knowledge in a book (is like) money in someone else's hand"]

VA comments: The second line of this proverb is
'Karyakale samutpanne na sa vidya na taddhanam||'
---One of the many proverbs that my Sanskrit teacher made us memorise in the
7th grade.
However, her interpretation was not that it is evil to write books, but
rather that we should be familiar with their contents so that we do not have
to search them in the books at the 11th hour.
The word 'koza' reminds me of another proverb:
"Apurvah ko'api kosho'ayam vidyate tava Bharati!
Vyayato vrddhimayati, kshayamayati sanchayat ||"

A proverb from the Mahabharata (have forgotten it, but will track it down)
explicitly states that it is a sin to write the Vedas and that the writers
of the Vedas pollute these texts.

Vishal
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