Sri Sangom Sir,
You have been belabouring on this point at times. But I do not think it is unmitigated curse that people resorted to learning by rote in the past. I do not find an alternate way of remembering things in the absence of a writing medium. Can you suggest a possible alternative?
Committing to memory still holds good for many of our basic things even in the instant computer stage today. I am sure you will admit it is easier and faster to recall a telephone number from memory than searching the phone book either in the cell phone or from the diary or from phone & address book. You might have probably not given much importance to the "Autofill" options in the computer which fills in the data on being prompted. The prompting has its beginning in the human memory.
Similarly it is much easier and swifter to recall human memory for simple arithmetical applications like 15 * 15 or 23 + 25 etc. rather than finding the calculator, switching it on and input-ting the data with fingers or powering on the PC and finding the calculator menu. The biggest advantage is being totally independent of artificial crutches.
Sure it has its own limitations, but the effort is not a wash out as you make it to appear.
There are some gems in the vedas, contrary to what is generally brought out. For instance, in the famed Chamakam chanting, anuvAkam 4.9.11, starting with "ekA cha mE, thrisaschamE" we find arithmetic progression of odd numbers from 1 to 33 and geometric progression of even numbers from 4 to 48. Why they are there is anybody's guess but it should be taken AS OUR INDOLENCE AND INSOLENCE that we refused to look farther and satisfied ourselves that ekA means paramAtman, tri means triguNAs, pancha refers to pancha bhoothas etc.
Similarly there are decimal numbers starting from 10 raised to the power of one to 10 raised to the power of 18 in yajurvedA (do not recall the verse # right away but can locate and furnish the same if needed) and these "memory rotes" pertain to the period which did not even have the perfunctory idea of what a decimal system is.
Amara-kOsha in all probability should be the most ancient, if not the first official thesaurus in any language. If we do not know how to use it the fault lies with us, not with the ancients or on the system.
Contrary to mere rote learning, SeekshA valli of taittiriya upaniSad asks the students to pause and meditate at sandhis and I tend to think meditate here means to understand the meaning and to internalize.
We must do our due diligence before throwing the baby with the bathwater and start blaming higher and lower caste issues as cause of everythingi.
Dear Shri Narayanan Sir,
I agree that rote learning or committing to memory is a good thing, but what we had was committing such a large amount of information into memory that the Manusmriti (I may be wrong here.) mentions that brahmacharis can spend their whole life time learning the vedas and remain unmarried! If we recall the north Indian brahmin surnames like Dwivedi (Dube), Trivedi, Chaturvedi (Chaubey), etc., we will be able to understand that our intellects were completely utilised for memorising and hardly for any new or original thinking.
The crucial point is why did we not look into the arithmetical and geometrical series in the chamaka prasna for more than 5000 years? You feel it was due to our OUR INDOLENCE AND INSOLENCE .(Indolence means, as per Wordweb, "Inactivity resulting from a dislike of work", and Insolence means "The trait of being rude and impertinent; inclined to take liberties").
I do not think it to be so. If there really was indolence, then how did many other things, including amarakOSam, aShTAdhyAyee, etc., were compiled? And if we hold that insolence was one reason, then the whole edifice of brahmin religiosity will fail to be explained. Or, do you hold that brahmins for millennia had been scrupulously chanting the vedas and other mantras, doing the prescribed nityAhnika etc., although they had no real belief in these things and were doing all these things after taking a lot of liberties and with a rude attitude? Again, these do not appear to be true to me.
This appears to be a curious case of contradiction to me. On the one hand you say that higher castes learned the things which are practically useless in modern times and on the other you lament the lower castes were denied learning the mumbo jumbo. So how could that denial of *useless* education place the lower castes at a disadvantage ? If anything they were relieved from the burden of such drudgery and should have shown their mettle in other fields. But such display has been totally absent or at least not recorded.
Getting educated formally is a kind of emancipative step. The lower castes did not have this "samskAra" for thousands of years. Their children therefore learned the work/s which were allotted to them by reason of their birth. (Incidentally, even today, about a Dalit million families of India do manual scavenging. Hence their children, even today, probably get trained and acclimatized for this kind of work and not for getting up early in the morning, taking bath, performing SandhyA and then learning the vedas by word of mouth from the guru or teacher.)
Other low caste youth who have become familiar for three or four generations, with the formal, school education system which we have, will not be as acclimatized to that system as brahmin/other high caste students who have been formally educated either in the vedas or the modern system or both, from time immemorial. This is the disadvantage for the lower castes. Simply because these youngsters have been relieved of the old drudgery, it does not mean that they will immediately pick up and excel in the formal school education line.
Suppose brahmin youth are asked to learn manual scavenging from tomorrow through a dictatorial edict, do you honestly feel that our youngsters will learn it in one generation?
Even though we know about horse chariots from Rg vedA days, and frenzied animal sacrifices from yajurvedA days, there is no mention of the so called lower caste people using their grey cells to stuff the wool sheared from the sheep into the hides of the deer they hunted down and ate, to make for a working seat cushion to be used in the chariot. So also there is no mention of using the hides of the animals slaughtered at vedis to be used as footwear, even a basic one like just tying the hide to the foot with string etc.
Do we have any conclusive evidence about these various activities you mention? Most of these are, I think, imagination arising from seeing pictures and images and tv serials. Valmiki Ramayana, if I remember correct, mentions Sita drying the hides of the animals killed for their food and most probably the hide was used for dress purpose. I do not think there is any mention of stuffed cushion for chariot seats.
It just beats my logic to know how denial of education in the last 2000 to 5000 years should affect the child joining the school today. How is past denial relevant to a child taking admission today?
Just imagine your grandson being compelled by authorities to learn wood cutter's job, carpentry, blacksmithy, glass blowing or even mere ploughing and tilling of farm land. Do you think your grandchildren will learn these things well enough in one generation?
You are refusing even to acknowledge that the present state of affairs is the result of CLERICAL JOB ORIENTATION EDUCATION thrust on 95% of India by Nehru & Indira Gandhi's Congress regime which made an average Indian just good for a Bank Clerical Job. They were kept happy by annual increments and inconsequential lateral promotions like Head Clerks, Junior Officers, Senior Officers etc. In some cases even the desk was the same notwithstanding even 3 promotions.
The elite and the ones who could afford Nehru's stupid scheme of higher education like IITs etc. could take that education and develop wings to fly to the greener pasture of western countries, mostly never to return. They were subsidized and funded by the whole troop of clerical India by paying their taxes promptly and without demur.
I think you are belabouring with this accusation of CLERICAL JOB ORIENTED EDUCATION a bit too much. Whether the education was CLERICAL JOB ORIENTED or not, it was a new kind of education, not seen in ancient India. Of course it produced clerks but not for banks alone but also to governments and a vast list of private and public enterprises also.
The elite you refer to also studied under tha very same CLERICAL JOB ORIENTED system only, I think. That many youth belonging to the higher castes were the major chunk of beneficiaries of the IITs is a fact which you may not be able to deny.
What exactly you want to drive home in the above two paras is not clear to me.
India has been independent only from 1991 that too partially after the economic liberalization when people started to refuse giving full mandate to congresswallahs to be their masters.
I believe, on the contrary, that from 1991 onwards India has once again become the subject state of MNCs and it is their agenda which is being implemented even more vigorously by the present government.
