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correctly will have to be done. So for thousands of years there was a strong insistence on not writing down any scripture, because the ancient seers did not want the phonetic arrangement lost. The scripture had to be passed on to others directly by word of mouth, so scriptures were known as shrutis, meaning that which is learnt by listening.
What was passed down in the form of written books was never accepted as scripture. It was all scientifically based on the arrangement of sound. At some places the sound had to be soft, and at others it had to be loud. It was very difficult to write these words in script form. The day the scriptures were reduced to writing, the essential, inherent, original, inner arrangement of sound was lost. It was no longer necessary to understand only through listening. You can read a scripture -- it is available in the market. Now there is no relationship or relevance to sound.
It is important to note that the emphasis of the scriptures was never on the meaning. The emphasis on meaning became relevant later, when we reduced those scriptures to writing. If some thing written down has no meaning it will look insane, so meaning has necessarily to be given to the written word. There are still some parts of vedic lore where no meaning could be deciphered -- and these are the real parts, because they are totally phonetic. They do not convey any meaning.
For example, the question about the meaning of the Tibetan mantra, "Aum mani padme hum," does not arise because its significance is totally phonetic. Similarly, there is no question of any meaning in the mantra,"Aum," but it has a sound-based impact which creates a special effect. When a meditator repeats, "Aum mani padme hum," again and again, the sound affects the various chakras and they are activated. The question is not of the meaning, the significance concerns the sounds themselves. So the fact that the old scriptures did not lay any stress on the meaning, but on their utility -- the purpose for which they could be used and the benefits which could be derived from them -- deserves our special attention.
Buddha was once asked, "What is truth?" He replied, "Truth
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