Dear Mark,

your student mentions “the subsequent privileging of textual sources by the colonial West and the Academy,” but my impression is that, at least for the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa, it was the other way around. There was a privileging of oral sources or, rather, what scholars took to be their “‘oral’ “sources” (since there is no evidence they existed except for what scholars reductively extrapolated from their written versions). She may want to read this paper on how scholars, using circular and unscientific arguments, posited hypothetical oral versions of these texts: https://www.academia.edu/34898668/John_Brockington_and_the_Sanskrit_Epics.

She will also find resources in The Nay Science, chapters 1–2 to answer her entirely valid question, “Who is excluded and/or included by the privileging of one kind of knowledge over the other?” As this has been a frequent source of misunderstanding (Jan Houben got our views wrong when he wrote, “except for Adluri and Bagchee most specialists agree this [oral transmission] played an important role in the early transmission of the Indian epics”), the point is not that an oral tradition does not exist, but that scholars have failed to make a case that oral versions conforming to their prejudices about the texts and the tradition actually existed—a point we also clarify in the Brockington paper (see n. 8).

Best,
Joydeep

Dr. Joydeep Bagchee
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
___________________
What, then, is Philosophy?
Philosophy is the supremely precious.

Plotinus, Enneads I.III.5

On 2 November 2017 at 22:21, Mark McLaughlin via INDOLOGY <indology@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 Studies
College of William and Mary
Williamsburg, VA

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