[INDOLOGY] Sources on Relationship btw Oral/Literary Traditions

[Lubomír Ondračka]

Dear Mark,

as far as I know, there is no comprehensive work dealing with orality/literacy question in India comparable to the volume we have on Iran (Orality and Textuality in the Iranian World, ed. by Julia Rubanovich, Brill 2015). I would recommend to your student to go through this excellent work (at least for methodological reasons).

I think the best starting point for India might be Annette Wilke and Oliver Moebus, Sound and Communication (De Gruyter 2011). It's very vast (probably unnecessarily too vast) and sometimes rather technical book, but there are chapters dealing with some of the questions which your student is asking and the book has very extensive bibliography.

There are, of course, many special studies on different aspects of orality/literacy problem in India (mostly on Vedic culture, but not only, see e.g. Danuta Stasik, The Oral vs. the Written: A Few Notes on the Composition of Tulsīdās’s Rāmcaritmānas, Rocznik Orientalistyczny 69 (2016): 20–30; or C. J. Fuller, Orality, Literacy and Memorization: Priestly Education in Contemporary South India, Modern Asian Studies 35.1 (2001): 1–31). 
More general is Ludo Rocher, Orality and Textuality in the Indian Context, Sino-Platonic Papers 49 (1994).

Best,
Lubomir


On Thu, 2 Nov 2017 17:21:03 -0400
Mark McLaughlin via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info> wrote:

> Dear Indology mind-hive,
> 
> 
> 
> I have an undergraduate student who is interested in writing a paper on
> questions of oral and literary traditions. I would like to solicit your
> opinions on potential sources for her. Please see her message below for a
> more detailed delineation of her questioning.
> 
> 
> 
> Many thanks in advance!
> 
> Mark
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Professor McLaughlin,
> 
> 
> 
> I read through a little more of the Pollock book last night to get a better
> feel for some questions. I think generally this is what I'm thinking:
> 
> 
> 
> What is the difference and relationship between the oral and literary
> tradition? How has that relationship evolved with the emergence of written
> texts, vernacularization, and the subsequent privileging of textual sources
> by the colonial West and the Academy? Who is excluded and/or included by
> the privileging of one kind of knowledge over the other? For scholars, what
> kind of nuanced understanding of literacy should be sought or acknowledged
> given that "to be literate" can mean different things in different
> cultures?
> 
> 
> 
> Let me know if this sounds like what I was talking about the other day!
> 
> 
> 
> Best,
> 
> Emma
> 
> -- 
> Mark McLaughlin
> *Visiting Assistant Professor of South Asian Religions*
> 
> 
> *Department of Religious StudiesCollege of William and MaryWilliamsburg, VA*