Question

1.The painstaking memorisation of mathematical tables, historical dates, capitals of countries and even poems leaves an indelible mark on every adult who has attended school. However, all educators deprecate this rote system learning by orally reciting and consigning lessons to memory as mindless and mechanical, which goes against critical thinking and creativity. But is this dichotomy between creativity and rote learning part of a lazy binary thinking?

2.We often hear about people who can repeat the entire telephone directory or memorise the entire dictionary. Indians have a history of highly developed systems of memorisation, perfected through centuries of Vedic learning. From a typically Western perspective, the permanency of the written word has been pitted against the ‘unconscious operation of memory’ of oral cultures, and held to be more reliable in cultural transmission. However, refuting this thesis, Fritz Stall, an Indie scholar observes that the oral tradition in India is remarkable, “because it has led to scientific discoveries that are of enduring interest”. Of course, this mugging up can be aural (i.e. chanting aloud) or visual—mentally storing images in a visual map.

3.The advantages of rote memorisation—like it expands areas of the mind to great possibilities—are now becoming evident to the world. Various accounts from ancient India, including those from travellers like I-tsing, point to the fool-proof system of oral memorisation and the capacity to absorb volumes of data.

4.A parallel dimension of transmission of knowledge also existed in India, with a flexible mode of oral communication through which knowledge was disseminated. One instance is the narrative-performative tradition of recitation, which extended basic story through interpolations, conscious extensions and embedding of sub-narratives. Many Indian myths, legends, epics, and fables such as Kathasaritsagara and Jataka stories were spread though this process. While the story remains the same, the interpretation changes according to who says it, where it is said and how it is said. While communicating mathematics, philosophy and other scientific disciplines, cryptic text forms were created, that facilitated memorisation.

5.A related question pertains to cognition—how can we transmit principles using memorisation as a creative tool rather than as a mechanical process of repetition? Bhaskara’s Lilavati, the seminal 12th century illustrates how memorisation and creativity go together.

6.The fact that Bhaskara’s methods still figure in Indian pedagogic consciousness was recently brought home in a news report on the Ramanujan School of Mathematics in Patna, which trains youngsters from poor families to clear the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) entrance test. This year, all the 30 students of the school got through IITs. Anand Kumar, the school’s founder, called it the “sheer power of practice to break the so-called IIT code” and a student attributed the success to his teacher’s ability to teach differential calculus through a “thrilling story of a daring robber”.

Answer 1

Answer:

Ashtanga yoga (Sanskrit: aṣṭāṅgayoga[1], "the eight limbs of yoga") is Patanjali's classification of classical yoga, as set out in his Yoga Sutras. He defined the eight limbs as yama (abstinences), niyama (observances), asana (postures), pranayama (breathing), pratyahara (withdrawal), dharana (concentration), dhyana (meditation) and samadhi (absorption).