Veda11- Ingenious ways to remember a massive text

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We were discussing various reasons why Vedic Indians never wrote down the massive texts namely the Vedas. They chose to orally transmit them from generation to generation. No matter why they did that, it was a herculean effort considering the size of these texts. Added to this, there were stringent restrictions on exact ways of pronouncing the Mantras, the elaborate liturgy and so on. They appear to have managed to preserve all these things almost unchanged over thousands of years without resorting to writing them down. How did they manage to do that?

 

Before we get into the specifics of techniques employed by these ancient Indians, let us do a quick tour of various mechanisms in our brain that enable us to memorize anything.

 

 

We normally club whatever we remember as memory, as if all that information is stored in our brain like the way a computer stores in its memory chips or hard disks. The memory system in our brain is much more complex than that in a sophisticated computer. There is not one but many types of memories in our brain. And depending on the type and its usage, these memories are located in various regions of the brain.

 

When we read a nice poem, what we read is remembered in memories called descriptive memories or declarative memories. When we memorize the recipe of our favorite dish for example, the step by step procedure of cooking is stored in the procedural memories. When we learn a musical instrument, the way we move our fingers or the lips are stored in motor memories, and so on. There are different mechanisms and brain components that aide in setting up and maintaining these memories. But the most basic underlying mechanism is more or less similar.

 

At the lowest level, the memories are stored as an interconnected cluster of neurons. These are called neural networks. Neurons are like the transistors that form the fundamental components in our computers. The number of neurons and how they are interconnected is what captures the details that we remember. But unlike the computer memories, these interconnections as well as their strengths are not fixed but can vary over a period of time. Stronger the connections, longer lasting those memories. That is the reason why we tend to be forgetful as we age since the strengths of the connections are not adequate enough to retain what we remember.

 

Remembering the Vedas means remembering how exactly each mantra is uttered and also the wordings of these Mantras, and the steps in ritualistic procedures. So, at least three kinds of memories are involved – motor memory, descriptive memory, and procedural memory.

 

There are some basic mechanisms underlying the buildup of these memories. At the most fundamental level, there is what is called as the ‘Hebbian rule’ that decides the strengths of connection between two neurons. This strength increases as the activity in the other end of the connection increases. This increase in activity could be due to repeated stimulation of the neurons, or it could be due to neurons which are already active. But this change in the strength is two way, it could either increase or decrease. Increase would normally strengthen the connection and tends to retain the stored information. While the decrease could mean gradual loss of information due to weaker connection. Let us take specific examples to understand this better.

 

When you start learning to play a musical instrument for example, our brain gradually builds a motor memory to record how the instrument has to be played. This is not an instantaneous process as we all know. This takes a long series of trial and error steps over a period of time. At each stage there is a corrective feedback either from our teacher or from our own careful observation of the sound produced.

 

Every time a correction is applied, some changes in the motor memory that started off as a crudely connected collection of neurons, take place. Newer connections or increase in strengths of previously existing connections can take place. It could also be gradual weakening of a ‘wrong’ connection or total removal of it. After a series of training rounds, we end up with a cluster of ‘well connected’ neurons, that probably have all the information needed to play the instrument.

 

Once such a cluster is formed, we don’t need to refine it further. Playing of the instrument almost becomes automatic activity with very little attention needed to the details.

 

When we try to remember some poetry or a set of steps needed to cook a nice meal for example, an altogether different mechanism is needed, though the underlying basic mechanisms are the same.

 

In good old days of land telephone lines and absence of instruments that can store-in our ‘contacts’ list, you probably have used a computer program that converts a long 10-digit phone number into a verbal acronym. Instead of remembering a series of meaningless digits, you find it easier to remember a series of words that convey some idea. These words as well as the idea conveyed by them is familiar to you and hence you tend to remember the acronym better. The dialer on your phone could easily convert this acronym into the sequence of digits without your bothering to remember them. You just need to remember the acronym.

 

Why were you not able to remember the digits but at the same time able to remember the acronym? That is because the words in the acronym have associated meanings familiar to you. They are not just standing alone as the digits. This is the mechanism behind remembering by ‘meaning association’. You establish a connection between a ‘to be remembered’ idea with something that is already remembered and well stored in our brain. More the things are associated with the newly formed memory means faster the setting up of connections in the new memory. The association aids Hebbian process of increasing the connection strengths.

 

So, if I utter a series of unconnected words, the chances are that you tend to forget that word series. But if I tie these words to convey some nice idea or meaning, you tend to remember it better.

 

Remembering the vast repository of the Vedas along with the right pronunciation needs both these mechanisms – successive training of the motor memories by repeated physical movements, as well as meaning association.

 

Not that the Vedic Indians were aware of these neurological mechanisms underlying the complex process of memory buildup, but they developed their own ingenious methods to achieve the same by years of practice and observation. We will discuss some of these methods in the next episodes.

 

 

A series discussing the most ancient of the Indian scriptures, nay the world scriptures namely the Vedas. © Dr. King, Swami Satyapriya 2021