Definition
Oral transmission in the sense of verbally passing on teachings “from mouth to ear” was the main means at the disposition of the early Buddhists in order to preserve their teachings for later generations.
Oral Transmission in Early Buddhism
In the absence of the use of writing for maintaining a textual tradition, the early Buddhists relied on oral means of transmission for passing on to posterity the discourses that had been delivered by the Buddha and his disciples. In doing so, the early Buddhists would have followed the example set by the Vedic oral transmission, where recitation of texts appears to have been carried out over successive generations with an impressive degree of precision. Unlike their Vedic predecessors, however, the Buddhist reciters involved in oral transmission had not necessarily been trained in memorization skills from their early youth onward and thus needed to employ various means to ensure the correct...
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Anālayo, B. (2017). Oral Transmission. In: Sarao, K.T.S., Long, J.D. (eds) Buddhism and Jainism. Encyclopedia of Indian Religions. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-0852-2_18
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