MEMORY (continued)
Contents of this section
Memory Aids
The Brahmans
The Ancient Greeks
Memory Aids
Among the Inca, the education of the nobility was the responsibility of the Amantas,
who were of aristocratic descent. Their instruction lasted four years.
The first year was directed to learning the Quechua language; the second year to
learning the religious traditions: the third and fourth years to learning the famous
knotted strings (used as memory aids) called the Quipu.
On Easter Island, the Rongorono, from noble families attached to the king, used
to learn chants and oral traditions in special huts. Alfred Mitraux (1941)
describes how this oral tradition is learned: 'The students memory was perfectly
trained, during the first year of schooling, they had to learn certain psalms by
heart, which they recalled while playing 'cat's cradle' (a string wound across the
fingers in certain patterns) each figure would represent a chant to be recited.
The Kou-hau made by the Rongorono on Easter Island, the skeins of coconut fibre
adorned with knots made in the Marquesas Islands, the wooden tablets of the Cuna
Indians in Panama, and the pieces of bark used by the Ojibwa Indians of North America,
do not, strictly speaking, constitute writing systems, but they do represent mnemo-technical
means pertaining to oral memory.
The same is true of certain systems of pictographical notation, such as the Aztec
ideograms. Fernando de Alva recalls that the Aztecs used to have writers for each
type of history 'some work with the Annals (Xiuhamatl) putting in order the
things which took place each year, giving the day, the month, the hour. Others
were charged with the genealogy and ancestors of the kings, nobles and persons of
lineage ... others took care of the painting of the boundaries, the limits and the
landmarks of the cities, provinces and recorded to whom they belonged.
These 'writers' used pictographs to construct a mnemonic system that later historians
could refer to, provided that they also referred to the purely oral tradition, since
a system of notation was not enough in itself for the total preservation of information.
It was necessary, in addition, to have recourse to the memory that was transmitted
by word of mouth through the traditional chants.
back to the
top
The Brahmans
In India, the Brahmans who teach the Vedas are specialists in the technique of
memory, even though the Vedas have for along time been fixed in writing. Louis Renou
noted that; there is something fascinating in the process of memorising the verses.
The master stares at the student while feeding him verses, so to speak, with an implacable
regularity, while the student rocks back and forth in squatting position. After looking
in for a few moments in such a recitation class, one better understands the hymn
of the Rigveda (7.103) in which this monotonous delivery has been likened to the
croaking of frogs
A precise description of the techniques of memorisation in the Vedic schools can
be found in the 15th chapter of the Rig Pratisakhya, an old phonetic and grammatical
treatise.
back to the
top
The Ancient Greeks
E. A. Havelock (1859-1939), British psychologist and author, insisted on the coexistence
of two types of memory in ancient Greece up until the time of Plato: (1) written
memory and (2) social memory that is still dependent on oral tradition. Thus
it is noteworthy that, although the archives were available from the end of the15th
cent B.C. it never occurred to Greek historians to refer to them as historical sources
more reliable than the tradition transmitted by the works of their predecessors (appraised
according to their degree of truthfulness) or transmitted by the experience of sight
or hearing of testimony. And yet, already from about 470 B.C. Pinda and Aeschylus
employ the metaphor that represents memory as an inscription, on the tablets of the
soul, of what is fit to be remembered. Shortly before the poet Simonides is said
to have invented the art of memory, a technique built upon the metaphor of writing,
which will undergo an important development, passing by the way of Roman rhetoric
(Quintillian) to the Renaissance. At the beginning of the 4th cent. B.C., Plato is
obviously preoccupied with the negative effects of the invention of writing on memory.
And Antisthenes of Athens recommends according more trust to personal memory than
to the external memory of written annotations.
Although Homer appears to have been necessary reference point in ancient Greece,
since his written text was learned by heart in the schools and recited by specialists
at religious festivals, there was no religious text that had authority over others.
Essentially pluralist and political Greek religion was a religion without dogmas.
It obeyed customs, which varied from one sanctuary to the next. As a result,
correct practice depended on diverse forms of information derived from a variety
of sources: the family, the tribe, the town, and so on. Certain religious practices,
such as though connected with the mysteries or with divination, were sometimes reserved
for certain families or circles of initiates (for example, the Eumolpides and the
Euryces, the Lamides, the Trophoniades), but every Greek, regardless of social status,
was capable of addressing a prayer to the gods or performing the actions indispensable
to a sacrifice. Deliberate memorisation, and for that matter writing as well, appeared
as religious practices only in the context of such marginal devotions such as Orphism
and Pythagoreanism.
back to the
top
|