The above is a screenshot of a tweet.
Got the above from twitter. When I was about 11-12 a man who was dressed as the man above came to our house and had all of us sign in a book that he 'rolled out'. The book was many feet long. And must have had at least a 1000 pages. But is cover was made of paper so the book could be rolled and then tied and carried in a bag. There on the same page, I saw the handwriting of my forefathers, whom I had never met. And there I wrote a sentence or two in my handwriting. As did everyone else in the family.
These are some of the ways India stands out as a civilisation compared to any other current day 'country.'. Imagine thinking of keeping records when writing itself was rare. Reading all these articles of writing and how it changed the human mind in the west, I realized that even in the west, 'literacy' is a recent thing. What of countries where first, there was a strong oral tradition. Meaning people were asked to memorise books. It was that that protected India from invaders. When the invaders came and burnt its libraries..because in cultures of the invaders only one book mattered....that extolled their religion.....(read here for what happened to Nalanda and its libraries...) the books could be written from the minds of those who had memorised it.
Knowing the value of oral and written tradition together and to understand its need for posterity.....well, India did great. That is why I still say, it is like no other country.
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