Jim, DaveK.

...and that's what I wondered too, DaveK. all present day techniques are
quite labourious and seem unequal to the task that the elders
accomplished. there has to be a much superior technique that the elders
followed (which perhaps included training of the mind in some way to grasp
and retain on one hearing) because that really is a huge amount of material
even to read in one lifetime much less memorise...

incidentally, I recall from my childhood how elders got a group of young
students to memorise sanskrit .slokas, stotras, vedic hymns, etc. -- the
elder would recite one line at a time and the class would follow in unison.
each line would be repeated 3 times before moving on to the next. then the
whole .sloka wud be recited together. the recitation was done in the poetic
metre (chanda) that applied so that the cadence also aided memory. the
elder, sometimes armed with a cane, walked between the ranks with his ear
strained to catch the faltering sound and responded "appropriately" whenever
he detected one. the next day a revision recitation of the complete text
learnt until the previous day was done -- a bright student led the
recitation this time and the rest of the class followed in unison.
Thereafter, a new piece of text was taken up for memorisation.

A similar method was used to memorise math tables including fraction tables:
1/4, 1/2, 3/4, 1-1/4 all the way upto 3-1/2
these were also recited in a simple tune / rhythm.

making it a group activity took boredom out of it.

with metta,
PG
__________________________________________

On 4/16/08, dkotschessa <dkotschessa@...> wrote:
>
> --- In Pali@yahoogroups.com <Pali%40yahoogroups.com>, "Jim Anderson"
> <jimanderson.on@...> wrote:
> >
> > Dear PG and Dave K.
> >
> > I think memorizing texts is very good training for the mind. Until
> the
> > canonical texts were first written down in their entirety in the
> first
> > century B.C.E. in Sri Lanka, they had to be memorized and transmitted
> > orally.
>
> Thank you Jim, and Thanks for your suggestion. I agree about the
> mental training aspect of it and it's one of the things that motivates
> me to do it.
>
> I often wonder if the elders had any particular technique for
> memorizing/transmitting the texts for all those years. I suppose
> that, in addition to having incredible minds, they were part of a
> culture where this was not unusual. But even so, that is a LOT of
> text.
>
> I suppose this also accounts for a lot of the repetition in the texts,
> which sounds a lot more musical in Pali.
>
> Does anybody know of any standard course of material that monks may be
> required to memorize? Texts from the Khuddaka Nikaya maybe?
>
> -DaveK
>
>
>


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