There is something about the intellectual depth, social poise, and basic economy of this sub-continent, popularly known as Bharat or India, that defies categorization of a Western breed. In India, over millennia, education was never linked to literacy. It was oral in tradition, and mainly through two texts of the Ramayana and Mahabharata. These were orally transmitted across generations and learned as an approach to face life. Both texts were in Sanskrit, and over a period of time, they were rendered into local languages. Ramayana, for example, has its Tamil version and a North Indian version in Ramchartimanas. Mahabharata was also rendered into many Indian languages, where in some versions very identifiable changes took place. However, the core story remained the same. Perhaps the text was not a story; it was an exploration of life.
Ramayana had no revelations, no trips of ‘revelation’, either. It was a narrative, the story of a Maryada Purushottam (a very evolved human story of Ram). Mahabharata barring the narrative of Gita, was a history of an empire which...
