Reading, Writing, and Philosophizing in Medieval India

It has often been pointed out—and rightly so—that oral tradition holds primacy in Indian culture and that the Brahmins were wary of writing. Indian scholars, however, adopted this technology early on, and it played a crucial role in the development of their philosophical systems in particular, notably because the circulation of manuscripts allowed representatives of rival religious movements to study their competitors’ works in depth. And while it is true that Indian speculations on language focus primarily on spoken and heard speech, we must put an end to the prejudice that writing and reading did not in any way stimulate the curiosity of thinkers on the subcontinent. They pondered the paradoxical ontological and epistemological status of written characters (are these visual forms—which exist solely to represent inaudible sounds—real or unreal? Deceptive or rich in information?), and they discussed at length the nature of the cognitive mechanisms at work when we read.