With all due respect, what you present in your email is the traditional view regarding the Vedas which is historically inaccurate. Indeed the oral tradition of the Vedas has been strong for millennia and continues up to these days among some Brahmin communities across India. However, the Vedas were written down in precolonial times and we have enough evidence of this before any orientalist such as Max Müller ever heard about the Vedas, let alone compiled them into "books". Indeed, Max Müller never set foot in India and thus never heard the Vedas first hand. He worked with Indian manuscripts (while also consulting traditional pandits via correspondence). This matter has been well documented by previous scholarship and indeed the excellent work of Cezary Galewicz (and others) is a great place to start with the complex question raised by Harry Spiers. For those interested in the relationship between orality and literacy in the Vedas, particularly in contemporary India can also refer to my OA book: Embodying the Vedas.Traditional Vedic Schools of Contemporary Maharashtra.
Greetings to all from India.
Borayin
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Dr. Borayin Larios
Head of the Indology Department
French Institute of Pondicherry
French Institute of Pondicherry
11, Saint Louis Street P.B.33,
Pondicherry 605001
Pondicherry 605001
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Researcher at the École française d'Extrême-Orient
Researcher at the École française d'Extrême-Orient
19 rue Dumas
605 001 Pondicherry, India
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Mobile: +91 8608252147 (Indian number)
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