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Why Did Ancient Indian Priests Memorize Thousands of Ritual Verses? - The Operative Power of Vedic Sacrifice | Sleepy Facts About History · Sleepy Facts About History

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Welcome to Sleepy Facts About History. On the
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plains of ancient India, men once measured rectangles
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of earth with cords, stacked specific woods,
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and kindled fires they believed sustained the
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cosmos itself. This episode explores the Vedic
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sacrifice, or yajña, an intricate system of ritual
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action performed without temples, images, or
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congregations. It examines how priests constructed
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temporary sacred spaces, established three distinct
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fires, and utilized precise physical actions
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alongside spoken formulas to maintain the cosmic
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order that governed the natural and moral universe.
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I wanted to understand why exact verbal performance
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mattered so much in this tradition. The episode
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details the remarkable oral techniques used to
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preserve the Vedic texts. Where words were not
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merely information about the rite, but operative
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components of it, we also look at the human structure
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behind the ceremonies. From the specialized roles
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of the four primary priests, to the essential
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reciprocity between the yajamana, the patron
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who commissioned the rite, and the ritual specialists
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who performed it. By examining the mechanics
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of these ancient fire offerings, we can see how
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early South Asian communities understood human
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action as a necessary force in keeping the world
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itself functioning. On a plain in northern India,
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sometime in the first millennium before the Common
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Era, men measure a rectangle of earth with cords.
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They stack wood of prescribed species. They prepare
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to kindle fires that they believe will sustain
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the cosmos itself. There are no temples here.
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There are no images. There is no congregation.
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There is only the conviction that precise human
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action, performed exactly and spoken exactly,
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is not symbolic but operative. It is part of
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the actual machinery by which the world continues
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in its course. Imagine a flat stretch of earth
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somewhere in the North Indian Plains, perhaps
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near the Sarasvati. or the upper Ganges. Sometime
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in the first millennium before the Common Era,
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the grass has been cut, the soil has been leveled
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and swept clean. A man, or more likely several
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men, are measuring the ground with cords. They
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are marking out a precise rectangle. They are
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laying down lines that will define where things
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must go and in what order. Nearby, bundles of
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firewood are stacked. These are Ah -Fatva, Udumbara,
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and Vikashmata, the specific woods required by
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the manuals. Fresh Darbar grass, cut with a particular
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blade, waits in sheaves. Nothing has been lit
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yet. The fires are still to be born, but the
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space is already alive with intention. because
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every cupid of this ground has been measured
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against a mental template passed down through
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generations of specialists who have never written
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it down. This is not a temple. There are no walls,
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no images, no congregation in the later sense.
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It is a temporary construction, a kind of open
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-air workshop, built to be used and in some cases
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partially dismantled afterward. What is being
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prepared here is a Vedic sacrifice, a Yechenya.
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The preparation itself is already part of the
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rite. The ground is not merely a stage. It is
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a claim about how order can be established through
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measured action. The people who will work here
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believe, with a precision we need to take seriously,
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that what they do with fire, word, and substance
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will reach across to powers that sustain the
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world itself. The space being measured is called
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the Vedi, the altar area. Its dimensions depend
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entirely on the rite being performed. For a simple
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offering, it might be modest. It might be a small
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platform of earth or a cleared patch marked with
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lines. For an elaborate soma sacrifice, it could
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be substantial. It could be built up with bricks
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in some rites. Each brick was laid with an accompanying
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formula that names its purpose and its place
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in the cosmic structure. The Kathapam Sat, one
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of the most extensive prose commentaries, describes
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this construction in extraordinary detail. It
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describes the measuring cord stretched across
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the ground. It describes the marking of lines
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with a wooden peg. It describes the laying of
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bricks in five layers. each layer corresponding
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to a season or a region of the cosmos. The entire
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altar becomes a model of the world itself. The
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fire that will eventually burn upon it is not
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placed on arbitrary earth. It is placed on a
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constructed cosmos, a temporary universe built
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anew for each performance. The utensils that
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will be used in this space have their own specificity.
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There are the wooden ladles, The sruk has a long
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handle for pouring ghee into the flames. The
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sruva is smaller, for more measured offerings.
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There are the cups and vessels of clay or copper,
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each shaped for a particular substance. For somarites,
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there are the pressing stones, heavy implements
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used to extract the juice from the plant. For
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animal offerings, there is the sacrificial post,
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the yupa, to which the victim is bound. This
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is a wooden pillar consecrated and set in the
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ground with its own accompanying formulas. These
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objects are not interchangeable. Their shapes,
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their materials, and their names are part of
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the knowledge the priests carry. Their correct
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use is as important as the correct recitation.
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To understand why this matters, we need to set
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aside several assumptions that a modern listener
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might bring. between 1500 and 500 BCE. Though
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scholars debate the exact boundaries, was not
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a single unchanging religious era. The texts
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we possess were composed and transmitted entirely
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by mouth in an early Indo -Aryan language we
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call Vedic Sanskrit. They were the work of priestly
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families over many generations. They were not
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writing for us. They were preserving with extraordinary
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mnemonic rigor. a body of knowledge that included
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hymns, sacrificial formulas, melodies, and prose
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explanations of ritual mechanics. The earliest
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of these texts, the Spudata, contains hymns that
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may reach back toward the middle of the second
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millennium BCE. The latest ritual manuals, the
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Mratasatras and Jihasatras, were probably composed
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around 600 to 300 BCE. Across this long span,
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practices changed. Regional variations developed.
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The social world of the priests evolved from
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clan -based lineages towards something more stratified,
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though not yet the fully developed Vasa system
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of later centuries. The geography matters too.
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The early Vedic world centered on the northwestern
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and north -central regions of the subcontinent.
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This included the Punjab, the land between the
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Sarasvati and the Setsets rivers, and later the
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Ganges Yamuna Dawab. Archaeology gives us material
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traces. Fire, altars and ritual structures at
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sites like Kausambi and Jagatgram confirm the
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textual picture of temporary ritual spaces without
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permanent temples. The absence of temples is
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itself significant. Vedic sacrifice was not about
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approaching a fixed sacred location. It was about
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constructing sacredness through procedure. So
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let us return to the ground being measured. The
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three fires must be established in specific positions.
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The Gurapatya, the household fire, is the foundation.
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It is in some sense the fire of the patron's
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own domestic hearth, brought here or kindled
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in relationship to it. The Havanir, the offering
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fire to the East. is where the main ablations
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will be poured. The dak -sih -sikini, the southern
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fire, serves protective and auxiliary functions.
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These are not decorative arrangements. The priests
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who tend them will feed them, watch their behavior,
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and treat them as living presences with whom
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they are in continuous relationship. The kindling
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itself is a procedure. The fire is not struck
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casually. It is generated through friction. or
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brought from an established source, or in some
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cases produced through a drill. This drill is
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the Arasi, the fire sticks, whose use is surrounded
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with specific formulas. The moment of ignition
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is not a casual preliminary. It is the birth
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of a presence that will receive, transform, and
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transmit what is offered. The fire is Agni, the
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god who is also the priest among the gods, the
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one who carries the offering to the other powers.
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But even this personification does not exhaust
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what the fire is. It is also simply fire. It
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is hot, consuming, luminous and dangerous. Its
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physical behavior matters. If it smokes, if it
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flares, if it dies down, these are signs that
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must be read and responded to. This brings us
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to the people who do the work and to the knowledge
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they carry. The preparation of the ground and
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the kindling of the fires are physical tasks,
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but they are meaningless, worse than meaningless,
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potentially harmful without the spoken formulas
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that accompany them. Here we encounter what may
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be the most distinctive feature of the Vedic
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system. The entire body of ritual knowledge was
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transmitted orally with a precision that has
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few parallels in the ancient world. The priests
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who perform a solemn Nrata sacrifice are not
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a single body, but a coordinated team. One priest
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recites the oldest hymns. He is the hots, the
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reciter, drawing from the sweda in its proper
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meters and with its proper pitch accents. Another
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performs the physical actions. He pours, measures,
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moves and arranges, while reciting formulas from
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the Yajurveda. He is the Advaru, the actor, the
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one whose hands do what the words describe. A
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third chants melodies, the musical settings of
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Diyavidic verses drawn from the Samavida. He
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is the Ugat, the chanter. His voice rising and
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falling in patterns learned from childhood and
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overseeing them, often in silence, is one who
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knows the whole procedure. He is the Brahman.
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the supervisor his presence is meant to catch
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errors to provide a kind of insurance against
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mistake that no single participant can offer
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these roles were typically hereditary preserved
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within specific lineages called these were branches
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of transmission that maintained not just the
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texts but the precise modes of recitation pronunciation
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and performance The exactness was not aesthetic
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preference in our sense. A mispronounced syllable,
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a wrong pitch accent, a formula out of sequence,
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these were not merely sloppy. They were believed
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to compromise the rite, to render it ineffective,
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even to endanger the patron and the priests themselves.
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The Brahma Shas, the prose commentaries composed
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from roughly 900 to 700 BCE, are full of anxious
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speculation about what happens when things go
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wrong. The Oratasutras, the later ritual manuals,
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prescribe elaborate remedies for errors detected
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during performance. This precision required remarkable
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techniques of memorization. The texts were not
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simply learned by rote repetition. They were
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encoded through multiple recitation methods designed
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to catch and prevent error. In the Parapa, samatha
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the word path each word is isolated and recited
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separately this breaks the continuous flow to
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ensure that no syllable is swallowed or altered
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by its neighbors in the krama pasinna the step
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path words are recited in pairs overlapping like
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bricks in a wall each word appears twice in different
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combinations revealing any distortion more complex
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methods the jahan and its elaborations weave
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the text into intricate patterns that make corruption
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almost mechanically detectable. A boy learning
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his family's recension might spend years on these
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techniques before he was trusted with public
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performance. The result was a living database
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of extraordinary density, maintained not on any
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physical medium but in human memory. checked
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and cross -checked by the structure of the training
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itself. This oral system created a particular
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kind of authority. The priest's power was not
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arbitrary social dominance, though it was certainly
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social dominance of a kind. It rested on a claim
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to knowledge that was difficult to acquire, demanding
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to maintain, and believed to be effective in
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ways that mattered to everyone. The texts were
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not secret in the sense of being hidden. but
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they were inaccessible in practice. Years of
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training, beginning in childhood, were required
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to master even a single Vedic recension. The
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knowledge was thus simultaneously widely known
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to exist and concentrated in relatively few hands.
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This is the social foundation of priestly authority
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in the Vedic world. It is important not to reduce
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it either to mere mystification or to mere technical
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expertise. It was both. and neither term alone
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captures it. The spoken formulas are not simply
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announcements or prayers in the familiar sense.
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They are performative utterances, words that
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are believed to do something in the world. When
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the Advaro says, this is for Agni, or when the
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Hot Sad recites a verse describing the God's
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chariot, the formula is part of the offering,
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not merely a label for it. The distinction between
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word and deed so sharp in modern thought is blurred
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here. The correct utterance at the correct moment
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with the correct material action is what makes
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the sacrifice operate. This is why the oral transmission
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had to be so precise. The words were not information
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about the ritual. They were components of it,
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as material in their way, as the ghee or the
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wood. And now we come to the center of the action.
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the offerings themselves, and the complex exchange
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that the sacrifice establishes. The materials
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placed in the fire vary enormously depending
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on the rite. The simplest domestic offerings
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might involve nothing more than milk or clarified
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butter, poured from a wooden ladle, while a brief
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formula is recited. More elaborate rites add
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grain, cakes, the pressed juice of the soma plant,
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and in certain ceremonies, animal victims. The
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Soma rites are particularly significant. This
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is both because of their centrality in the major
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Aruta ceremonies and because the identity of
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the Soma plant itself remains uncertain. It may
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have been a species of ephedra or possibly something
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else with psychoactive properties. The plant
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was pressed between stones, mixed with water
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and milk, and consumed by the priests as well
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as offered to the gods. This suggests that the
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experience of the rite was not purely external
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and observational. It was also in some sense
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participatory and transformative for the performers
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themselves. The Agna, Ssha, Noma, the foundational
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Soma sacrifice, gives us the clearest picture
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of how elaborate these rites could become. It
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was not a single day's work but a multi -day
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performance with a complex internal structure.
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Preliminary days established the fires, prepared
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the materials, and enacted the preliminary offerings.
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Then came the pressing days, when the soma was
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extracted, consecrated, and consumed in a sequence
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of oblations that built toward a climax. Each
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day had its own formulas, its own choreography
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of movement between the fires, its own restrictions
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and requirements for the participants. The patron,
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the Yajamana. was not merely present but progressively
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transformed through the rite. His status was
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elevated by each completed stage. The Agni served
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as a template, a kind of master pattern from
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which other elaborate sacrifices were understood
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as variations or elaborations. To perform it
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successfully was to demonstrate mastery of the
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entire system. The animal offerings, when they
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occurred, followed specific procedures. The victim,
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typically a goat, sometimes other animals, and
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in the rarest royal rites a horse, was consecrated,
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bound to a sacrificial post called the upa, and
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dispatched with a ritual knife. The distribution
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of parts followed precise rules, but it is crucial
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not to let this aspect dominate our picture of
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Vedic sacrifice. Many rites involved no animals
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at all. The stereotype of Vedic religion as uniformly
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bloody is a distortion, often shaped by later
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polemics or by selective attention to the most
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dramatic textual descriptions. The core logic
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of the offering is not killing but transformation.
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The substance is changed by fire, carried by
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Agni, and made available to powers beyond the
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human realm. This transformation establishes
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a reciprocity. The gods receive sustenance, honor,
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and the renewed activation of relationships that
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the sacrifice maintains. The human community,
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represented by the patron, receives in return
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prosperity, offspring, victory, health, a full
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life, or in the most ambitious claims, a place
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in the heavenly world. The mechanism is not bargaining
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in a crude sense. It is the maintenance of data.
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cosmic order or truth, the regularity that makes
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life possible. This includes the progression
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of seasons, the rising of sun and moon, and the
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fertility of crops and cattle. The sacrifice
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sustains this order by participating in it, by
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enacting at the human level the patterns that
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govern the cosmos. The patron, the Yajamana,
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is essential to this structure. He is not a passive
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beneficiary. He commissions the rite, provides
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the materials, feeds the priests, and undergoes
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preliminary observances that may include fasting,
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sexual abstinence, and other restrictions. During
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the sacrifice, he is present, seated in a designated
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place, identified in certain moments with the
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offering itself. The benefit flows to him and
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the merit or fruit of the rite is his, but he
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cannot perform it alone. He requires the priests
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and the priests require him. This interdependence
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is economically as well as ritually significant.
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The dachs suffer. The sacrificial fee or gift
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given to the priests is the binding mechanism
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of this relationship. It might consist of cows,
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gold, cloth, land or other goods. Its value was
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calibrated to the scale and importance of the
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rite. The texts discuss it extensively, and modern
22:19
scholars have debated its character. Was it exploitation,
22:23
a priestly tax on religious anxiety? Was it a
22:27
straightforward professional payment? Was it
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a gift that established ongoing obligation? The
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answer is probably that it was all of these and
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none exactly. The Daksh, he saw, was a contractual
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payment in the sense that it completed the exchange.
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The patron received the benefit of the rite,
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and the priests received their due. But it was
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also a ritual act in itself, prescribed and meaningful,
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not reducible to modern economic categories.
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And it created a bond. A patron who had given
23:02
daksash to a priestly family might return to
23:06
them, might be claimed by them, might find his
23:09
descendants tied to theirs in ongoing relationship.
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This is the social core of the system. It is
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not a simple hierarchy of priests over lay people,
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but a negotiated reciprocity between those who
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possessed specialized knowledge and those who
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needed its fruits. The authority of the priests
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was real, but it was not absolute. It depended
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on performance, on the continued willingness
23:35
of patrons to commission rites. on the demonstrated
23:39
effectiveness, or at least the plausible claim
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to effectiveness, of what the priests did. The
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system was dynamic, not static. Its dynamics
23:48
were shaped by the ambitions of patrons as much
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as by the prescriptions of priests. To see how
23:55
this worked in practice we need to look at the
23:57
variation in scale and context. The Vedic ritual
24:02
world was not uniform. At one end were the Yaya
24:06
rites. Domestic ceremonies performed at the household
24:10
fire. These required perhaps a single priest
24:13
or even the householder himself. They marked
24:16
the events of a life, birth, marriage, the beginning
24:20
of study, the establishment of a new home. The
24:25
Agnihotra, the daily morning and evening offering
24:28
of milk into the fire, was the simplest continuous
24:31
practice. It was a thread of ritual maintenance
24:35
running through ordinary life. These rites used
24:39
the same logic as the great ceremonies. They
24:43
used fire, formula, offering, and reciprocity,
24:46
but they operated on a scale accessible to many
24:49
households. At the other end stood the great
24:53
Narotta sacrifices, the solemn rites requiring
24:57
the three fires and multiple priests. These lasted
25:01
from a single day to many days or even weeks.
25:04
The Agni Omer established the template for understanding
25:09
this level of ritual. Beyond this, in frequency
25:13
if not in symbolic importance, were the royal
25:16
ceremonies. The Rajasuya, the consecration of
25:20
a king, wove together a series of offerings and
25:23
symbolic acts that enacted and legitimated political
25:26
authority through ritual form. There was the
25:30
dice game, in which the king played against a
25:33
nominal rival and his success foretold prosperity
25:36
for the realm. There was the chariot drive, a
25:40
ceremonial circuit that displayed mobility and
25:43
command. There was the cattle raid, a symbolic
25:47
assault on the enclosure of a designated enemy
25:50
that demonstrated the king's capacity to protect
25:53
and expand his people's wealth. These were not
25:56
mere entertainments or survivals of primitive
25:59
custom. They were structural elements of the
26:02
rite, each with its formulas, its fires, its
26:06
moment in the larger sequence. Each contributed
26:10
to the transformation of a man into a king through
26:13
performed action. The Ambe Vermida, the horse
26:18
sacrifice, was the rarest and most elaborate
26:21
of all. A horse was consecrated and released
26:25
to wander for a year, accompanied by the king's
26:28
men. Its movements claimed territory. Its eventual
26:33
return and sacrifice marked the apex of royal
26:36
power. These were not frequent events. They were
26:40
exceptional, memorable, and heavily freighted
26:44
with meaning precisely because of their rarity.
26:47
The same underlying logic scaled across these
26:50
contexts. Fire, formula, offering, patron, priest,
26:55
payment. These elements recurred. But their combination
26:59
and elaboration varied enormously. The social
27:03
world they implied was not a single flat hierarchy.
27:07
but a complex field of household, clan, regional,
27:11
and royal interests. The texts that describe
27:15
these rites, it must be emphasized, are prescriptive
27:18
rather than descriptive. They tell us what should
27:21
happen, not necessarily what did happen. We do
27:25
not know how often the great Theruta sacrifices
27:28
were actually performed, or how closely actual
27:32
practice matched textual ideal. The archaeology
27:36
confirms the existence of ritual spaces and fire
27:40
altars, but it cannot tell us the frequency or
27:43
social distribution of elaborate rites. The texts
27:47
themselves, composed by and for priestly lineages,
27:51
may exaggerate the importance of the ceremonies
27:54
they describe. They may reflect the aspirations
27:57
of a particular social stratum rather than the
28:00
common practice of all communities. This uncertainty
28:05
is not a failure of evidence, but a condition
28:08
we must work with. What we can say with confidence
28:11
is that the Vedic ritual system, as transmitted
28:14
in its texts and partially confirmed by material
28:17
remains, represented a remarkable achievement
28:20
of knowledge preservation and social organization.
28:24
All of this required sustained institutional
28:26
support across generations. It required the memorization
28:31
of thousands of verses with precise phonetic
28:33
and melodic detail. It required the coordination
28:37
of multiple specialists in extended performances.
28:41
It required the construction of temporary ritual
28:44
spaces with measured precision. And the system's
28:48
own self -understanding, articulated in the Brahmashnis,
28:52
sas, and other commentaries, was that this activity
28:56
sustained the world. The concept of hnatha, cosmic
29:00
order is central here. It appears already in
29:04
the said Vipada as the principle that governs
29:08
the regularities of nature and the moral obligations
29:11
of humans. The sacrifice maintains to by enacting
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it, by bringing human speech and action into
29:20
alignment with cosmic pattern. This is not merely
29:23
a philosophical abstraction. It is built into
29:27
the procedures. It is built into the measuring
29:31
of the ground, the timing of offerings by the
29:34
sun's position, and the correspondence between
29:37
the parts of the sacrifice and the parts of the
29:40
year or the cosmos. The Atapatha Brahmashas develops
29:45
these correspondences with elaborate detail,
29:48
explaining the meaning of each action by reference
29:51
to cosmic structures. The fire altar itself,
29:55
with its five layers of bricks, becomes a model
29:58
of the five seasons, the five regions, the fivefold
30:03
division of the world. Whether these explanations
30:06
were believed literally, or served as mnemonic
30:09
and pedagogical devices, or operated at multiple
30:13
levels simultaneously, is difficult to determine.
30:17
The texts do not give us access to individual
30:20
psychology. They give us access to a system of
30:23
knowledge that made sense of the world through
30:26
ritual action. It is also important to recognize
30:30
that this system was not opposed to philosophical
30:34
reflection, as later stereotypes sometimes suggest.
30:38
The Upanishads, often presented as a rejection
30:43
of ritual in favor of mystical knowledge, emerged
30:47
from within the ritual tradition, not from outside
30:50
it. Their speculations about the self, the cosmos,
30:55
And the ultimate ground of reality grew out of
30:58
the very practices of sacrifice and the very
31:00
problems of interpretation that the ritual texts
31:03
posed. The question of what the sacrifice really
31:07
accomplishes, of how the patron reaches the heavenly
31:10
world, of what corresponds to what in the elaborate
31:14
symbolic architectures, these questions are already
31:18
present in the Brahma Shas, the Upana. Let's
31:22
push them further. To treat Vedic sacrifice as
31:26
mindless ritual opposed to philosophy is to miss
31:29
the intellectual vitality of the tradition. Precise
31:33
performance generated reflection rather than
31:36
replacing it. Similarly, we must resist the temptation
31:40
to read later social formations back into the
31:43
earliest period. with its elaborate rules of
31:57
purity and pollution, was not yet fully formed
32:00
in the early Vedic centuries. Social organization
32:04
was more fluid, more clan -based, more dependent
32:08
on lineage and regional variation. The priests
32:11
were hereditary specialists, but the boundaries
32:15
between priestly, warrior, and productive groups
32:18
were not yet rigidified into the categories of
32:20
later law book. When we speak of priests in the
32:24
Vedic period, We should think of learned families
32:27
with recognized expertise, not a unified clergy
32:30
with fixed status across all regions. And when
32:35
we speak of caste, if we must use the term at
32:38
all, we should be careful to distinguish the
32:40
emerging hereditary specializations of the Vedic
32:43
period from the complex Jati and Varsar hierarchies
32:47
of later centuries. What, then, did this system
32:51
actually sustain? It sustained, first of all,
32:55
a particular form of knowledge. This knowledge
32:58
was orally transmitted, precisely performed,
33:02
socially concentrated, and believed to be effective
33:04
in maintaining cosmic and human order. It sustained
33:09
relationships between patrons and priests, between
33:12
households and specialists, between regional
33:15
communities and the broader networks of Vedic
33:18
learning that spread across the North Indian
33:20
plains. It sustained claims to authority. Royal
33:26
authority was sustained through the great consecrations.
33:30
Priestly authority was sustained through the
33:32
preservation and performance of the texts. Household
33:36
authority was sustained through the maintenance
33:39
of the domestic fires. And it sustained a way
33:43
of understanding the world in which human action,
33:45
properly coordinated and precisely executed,
33:49
could participate in and maintain the structures
33:52
of reality itself. The limits of our knowledge
33:55
are real and should be acknowledged. We do not
33:59
know how widely the elaborate, draw -to -rights
34:03
were practiced. We do not know the identity of
34:06
Soma. We do not know the degree of continuity
34:10
between the Indus Valley civilization and Vedic
34:13
culture, or how much the ritual system drew on
34:16
earlier South Asian traditions versus Indo -Iranian
34:19
inheritances. We do not know what individual
34:23
participants believed or felt. We have the texts,
34:28
with their idealized prescriptions, and the archaeology
34:32
with its partial confirmation and many silences.
34:35
Between these we construct our understanding,
34:39
always provisional, always subject to revision,
34:43
but what we can say, with the confidence that
34:46
the evidence allows. is that the Vedic sacrifice
34:49
was a remarkable institution. It was a technology
34:53
of order, as we might call it, in which fire,
34:57
speech, substance, and social coordination were
35:01
brought together in the belief that exact performance
35:04
could sustain the relationships between human
35:06
communities and cosmic powers. The authority
35:10
it generated was not arbitrary. It rested on
35:14
the demonstrated capacity to preserve and deploy
35:17
complex knowledge. It rested on the social need
35:21
for the benefits that knowledge claimed to provide.
35:25
And it rested on the conviction, maintained across
35:28
centuries of oral transmission, that the measured
35:31
word and the tended fire were not merely symbolic,
35:34
but operative, part of the actual machinery by
35:37
which the world continued in its course. When
35:41
the last formula had been spoken, when the fires
35:44
had been fed and in some cases extinguished.
35:47
When the patron had given his duksa in the priests
35:51
had gathered their goods, the temporary ground
35:54
would return to ordinary earth. The cords would
35:58
be rolled up. The remaining grass would be scattered.
36:02
The ashes would perhaps be collected for ritual
36:05
purposes or left to the wind. But the performance
36:09
would persist in memory in the texts preserved
36:12
by the lineages. in the relationships established
36:15
between those who had participated and the next
36:19
time the need arose for prosperity for offspring
36:23
for victory for the maintenance of order the
36:26
ground would be measured again the fires would
36:29
be kindled again the ancient words would be spoken
36:33
again with the precision that was believed to
36:35
make them work this was not a religion of fixed
36:39
places and permanent structures it was a religion
36:43
of exact repetition of knowledge carried in living
36:46
memory, of the conviction that human beings could,
36:50
through disciplined action, participate in the
36:52
sustaining of reality itself.