Mnemonics since time immemorial

You must have heard about mnemonics.  It deals with remembering things better. For example there are seven colours in a rainbow. To keep them in mind in order we use a mnemonic `VIBGYOR`.  The other day someone found it difficult to recall the names of the nine planets. But when a memory trick in the form of a sentence was supplied to him, he felt overjoyed on realizing how easy it was to get the facts fixed in the mind using mnemonics.   I know you are interested in knowing the trick which made him feel so thrilled. It was this – My Very Easy Method; Just Set Up Nine Planets. Each word in the sentence is capitalized to indicate that they are the first letters of nine planets respectively. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. Nice, isn`t it?

Once a school boy got vexed up with mathematics. He could not get `arithmetic` spelling right. The teacher had tried a lot but ultimately tired of  teaching him.  The boy`s uncle felt sympathetic for him and wanted to make things clear. He took the boy out and bought him an ice cream. While coming back home, he asks the boy, “Dear fellow,  you know there is a rat in your house and it causes a lot of troubles to all of you. If you left this ice cream at home, what would happen to it?” The boy immediately responded by saying, “The rat in the house might eat the ice cream.” “That`s it,” exclaimed the uncle, “you have found the solution to your problem! You can now remember the spelling of arithmetic.” The bewildered boy asked, “How?” “Simple,” said uncle ” just pick out all the first letters of the words from your sentence – A Rat In The House Might Eat The Ice Cream. Say this sentence a number times. You will never forget the spelling.”

The boy was very happy. But, he had something else to get clarified. He was sure the uncle can show a smarter way to get through the difficulty. He started to say, “I hate mathematics. I strongly feel all mathematics books should commit suicide. They have all problems from cover to cover. I do not know how to solve them all. Please tell me a shorter sentence than the one you have just told for arithmetic to enable me to perform well.”  The uncle knew that the boy had just got some inquisitive interest towards the subject. He wanted to go on with a bit of sermonizing. ” I will proceed to tell you a mantra- a charm to make any thing possible for you. If you remind yourself of this everyday, and follow as it says, there won`t be any retreating for you.” The boy became extremely curious. Smiling, the uncle revealed the secret – “The charm is this boy – practice makes a man perfect.”  It is true. Practice and practice then failure is scared to come near you and success approaches you with stretched hands to take you into its folds.

Let us now go a little into distant past. I think mnemonics is not a latest science. It must have been used by our ancestors as well. Otherwise how could they have remembered thousands  of Sanskrit slokas and passed them on to the next generation orally?  They depended on mental power until the script was invented for languages. I suppose, they would have used different kinds of mnemonics – some for the learned and some others for the illiterates.

Folk songs, art forms were all memory tricks. We are surprised to notice absolute illiterate villagers  quote words of wisdom from our scriptures like The Ramayana and The Mahabharata. It would have been possible through folk songs, dramas, cinemas based on these legends. Some times Gods` statutes/pictures are used to convey a clear message. For example Goddess Sarasvati, who is revered to be the goddess of education. 

Let us now come to the symbolism represented by the form of the Goddess.  Four things are important for a knowledge seeker who wants to become successful.

1. Knowledge is bliss; ignorance is misery. Saraswathi is always clad in a white saree. White is the symbol of knowledge and black- ignorance.

2. After understanding that knowledge is all powerful, we should not proceed to learn things blindly.  We must know the objective of learning. The process should not be tedious. To convey these, the goddess has four arms. She plays veena(pleasantness)  with two of them and holds a book(learning) and a rosary(ethics) respectively in the remaining hands.

3. We should always be focused but never be lured by attractions.   She has two vehicles – one a peacock and the other a swan. The peacock represents attractiveness(plumage), swan shows wisdom(capacity to separate milk from water).  We should never go astray, led by various attractions like T.V. , cinemas, social networking, bad friends and a plethora of them.

4. She is said to be the goddess of speech. All learning is futile unless you have proper communication skills.

On looking at the picture of Goddess Saraswathi, or simply contemplating on her these four important thing should come to our mind. Hence, this is the strongest pictorial representation of dos and don`ts of a true knowledge seeker.

(This article was originally written for my English blog)

© Dantuluri Kishore Varma