Date/Time
Date(s) - 16 Oct 2012
5:30 PM - 8:15 PM
Location
Columbia University Faculty House
Category(ies) No Categories
The second meeting of the Columbia University Seminar on Religion and Writing will take place on Tuesday, October 16, 2012, in the Faculty House of Columbia University.
Michael Witzel, the Wales Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University, will lead a discussion entitled:
Literacy and Orality in Vedic Tradition
The strictly oral tradition of the four Vedas is unique in the world due to the strict maintenance of its phonetic, accentual and prosodic features over the past c. 3000 years. It has been reinforced by an unbroken chain of teacher-student relationship and tools such as the Padapatha. After some initial, rather minute changes, a fixed text of the Rgveda has been established by Sakalya around 500 BCE. Nevertheless the introduction of writing in the northwest of the subcontinent under the Persians introduced some reactions that led to Panini’s grammar as well as to some attempts to write down Vedic and Buddhist texts around 50 BCE. Writing the sacred Vedas was however quickly condemned by the Epic and the Smrtis. Only around 1000 CE the first written Veda texts were reported (by Albiruni) and a little later the first extant manuscripts appeared. Even then, the oral tradition has been reinforced and carried out until today. It is only now that it is under serious threat and may have to be supported in print and, increasingly, by electronic means: a new “teacher” is emerging that will carry forward the tradition.
We will gather after 5:30 pm on the second floor, where dinner will follow at 6 pm. The talk will begin at 7:00 pm sharp.
Directions to Faculty House can be found at
http://universityseminars.colu
If you would like to attend the dinner prior to Dr. Witzel’s presentation, please confirm by notifying the rapporteur Hannah Barker
([email protected]) no later than TUESDAY, October 9.
For further information about the Seminar on Religion and Writing, please visit our website at https://researchblogs.cul.colu