Orality, literacy and memorization: Priestly education in contemporary South India

Abstract

It is notable that Minakshi temple priests and their sons attend Agamic schools with an outlook and motivation which are much the same as they are towards ordinary education. Thus priestly students, even college graduates in science or commerce, commonly insist that there is not much difference between religious and ordinary education. In their own eyes, learning orally with extensive rote-memorization, in a language not properly understood, does not radically distinguish Agamic education from secular education based on the literate mode of communication and ideally oriented towards intellectual understanding. Education, after all, is primarily about acquiring knowledge largely stored in books-even though the means to do so varies-and one of its main purposes is to train people for professional employment in a modern society that demands qualifications. This may be an instrumental attitude to education, religious or secular, but it is hardly one confined to the priests, even if it causes disquiet in modern academics and traditional gurus alike.