The oral transmission of literature has united so many people that it seems tragic that rote-learning should now have fallen so far out of favour.

As there was no way of publishing poems, most were lost in the uncertain process of oral transmission, unless they were rescued and collected in private anthologies.

The work would have survived through oral transmission until first written down, perhaps in the 9th century.

Another form of translation was oral transmission; this was used to pass medical knowledge from generation to generation.

These sayings spread by oral transmission; later the founder's disciples set them in writing, developing the thoughts of their master into a system.