> This in an enormous accomplishment given the vast corpus of text preserved without any errors creeping in.
This bit is particularly questionable. It's unproveable -- if a text was only transmitted orally, there's no way to compare its modern form to an older version -- and it's probably wrong. The short-range memorization techniques described in the article don't guard against larger-scale errors in memorization, like omitting a "chapter" of a text, nor do they prevent single-word changes, like a student mishearing a word for another similar-sounding word.
I disagree. The key difference is here is that language sanskrit is unlike any other languages in the world. Somewhere during 400 BC. a grammarian named Panini formalized Sanskrit grammar as precise, formally defined 4200 rules. This book called `Ashtadhyayi` or 18 chapters was an exhaustive book of Sanskrit grammar and remains so even today. Panini defined a meta language to define Sanskrit grammar.
What this meant was that language stopped evolving since last 2400 years ago. You can create new words but there are precise rules for it. All this means there is no scope for "dialects", words meanings changing with geography etc. Different vedic chants separated by thousands of miles and 1000 years in time are exactly the same and perfectly understandable in any part of the country for anyone who has studied Sanskrit.
This makes Vedic chants unlike anything English, Latin or Arabic has to offer.
While what you say is true for Sanskrit is true, that Sanskrit is in a way fixed, it doesn't mean Sanskrit stopped evolving, it has certainly evolved since the time of Panini, just evolved in a way that doesn't break the rules set up by Panini. That however is a topic for another discussion as the vedas aren't composed in Paninian Sanskrit.
As for the vedas, specifically Rigveda (which is the only one I can comment on with some expertise) we have what we can call different recensions of the text. These texts, independently transmitted, differ very little from each other. This fact alone strongly indicate that even while they've been orally transmitted for many generations, they are more or less uncorrupted by the act of transmission.
Much more could be written on this subject (and has been). However, english isn't my native language, it is late and this comment could go on and on…short story is: memorization and oral transmission seems to work!
How does a rigid, comprehensive, and prescriptive grammar ensure accurate oral transmission of linguistic works across generations? How does such a grammar prevent semantic shifts across time?
Grammar is not rigid, it is just well defined. You can write a sentence in a dozen different ways, it is just that the meaning can be derived by a formal process.
Imagine you had to pass down a Java program (through oral tradition) to sort numbers and you had a Java Language Specification that remains unchanged. Now compare that to say English language where and you write an essay on sorting numbers. If both things are passed down orally over few dozen generations which one is likely to keep its form ?
apparently brahmins in different parts of India, speaking different languages, from different schools, separated for generations recite these texts identically. while it doesn't prove anything it's plausible that due to these techniques and processes that have been able to preserve these texts verbatim.
I disagree, since it was spread orally and these texts were widespread in the subcontinent you could measure the similarity in different current renditions. If you looked at enough people's renderings you could even get a sense of how the transmission corrupts over time.
You compare different lineages and use standard linguistic techniques for detecting language change. It’s not perfect, but with long texts you end up doing the same thing because it’s rare for written things to last more than a couple of hundred years without extremely good luck and often it takes just that long for a text to become popular enough for there to be enough copies for you to find and compare.
"Divisional protection" appears to simply be stating that the Vedas are divided into sections. This doesn't provide any form of error correction; it's simply a means of organization.
"Meter protection" states that the Vedas consist of metrical verse. This provides a limited level of protection against certain types of errors (like inserted or deleted words), but not against larger changes.
"Swara protection" and "Mudra protection" state that the chants are tonal, and that those tones are associated with particular gestures. I'm not sure what protection this is meant to provide.
"Patha protection" is a restatement of the same memorization technique described in the OP.
This bit is particularly questionable. It's unproveable -- if a text was only transmitted orally, there's no way to compare its modern form to an older version -- and it's probably wrong. The short-range memorization techniques described in the article don't guard against larger-scale errors in memorization, like omitting a "chapter" of a text, nor do they prevent single-word changes, like a student mishearing a word for another similar-sounding word.