Universalization and parochialisation (Little and great traditions)

Little and Great Tradition

Milton Singer and Robert Redfield developed the twin concept of Little Tradition and Great Tradition while studying the orthogenesis of Indian Civilization in Madras city, now known as Chennai. Tradition means handing down of information, beliefs and customs by word of mouth in way of examples from one generation to another. In other words, tradition is the inherited practices or opinion and conventions associated with a social group for a particular period. This also includes attitudes of the people, durable interactional patterns and socio-cultural institutions. Great tradition is associated with the elites, literate and reflective few who are capable of analysing, interpreting and reflecting cultural knowledge. Great tradition is a body of knowledge which functions as the beacon light of knowledge. In contradiction to this little tradition comprises the belief pattern, the institutions, knowledge including proverbs, riddles, anecdotes, folk tales, legends, myths and the whole body of folk-lore of the folk and /or the unlettered peasants who imbibe cultural knowledge from the great tradition. The unity of Indian civilization is reflected in the perpetuation of the unity of worldview of both the folk /peasant and the elites or the literati through cultural performance and their cultural products. Cultural performance are institutionalized around the structure of both great tradition and little traditions.

There are several centres of great tradition in India and there is a network of socio-cultural relationship. This relationship is based on cultural knowledge and ideology. There is a difference in cultural performances of great tradition and little traditions. The domain of great tradition represents the textual or the Shastriya nuances, whereas the universes of little traditions are folk/peasant and local versions of textual knowledge and cultural performance. Great tradition stands for persisting important arrangements of various roles and statuses appearing in such corporate bodies, like caste, sects, teachers, reciters, ritual leaders, priests, cultural performers, religions preachers etc. all of whom are engaged in inculcation and regular dissemination of cultural knowledge. The body of knowledge which they includes is from various religious texts, such as mythologies and epics.

The versions of the Ramayana and Mahabharat are two important religious texts which formed the basis of cultural performances. These two great epics have their local versions which have been written in simpler languages with local examples for the easy comprehension of folk/peasant people. As the main hinterland of cultural performance are countless villages and the spectators are the peasants, the epics and other mythologies have been written in local languages with simplers style.

The little tradition consists of its own role incumbents : folk artists, folk musicians, story-tellers, tellers of riddles, street singers, mendicant performers, interpreters of proverbs and puzzles, street dancers, astrologers, fortune-tellers and medicinemen. In a village, the primary school teacher is a key person as regards little tradition knowledge. He himself performs multiple cultural roles and with the help of village leaders organises various folk performances, mythological plays, dramas, recitation of sacred language, saying of prayers accompanied by folk music which serve two purposes : (1) singing of devotional songs and (2) providing entertainment. The former activity is a sacred duty and the latter act is secular one, meant for relieving stress and strain to which the peasants are sometimes subjected to.

The practice of great tradition and little traditions foster collaboration, cooperation and unequal interaction between the two. Custom is what people follow and do or practise collectively and transmit the same from one generation to another. Through the regularity of interaction between the two the Indian civilisation marches forward. Changes in the great tradition are initiated by the literate or reflected few keeping in view the necessities of time and space. As great traditions in India are bound up with certain cultural ties any innovation or change, which takes place at an important centre influences similar changes at other centres gradually and once the centre of great tradition assimilates change, it also influences some sort of changes in the little tradition of its hinterland. Thus, the process of change is top-down or from the apex to the ground in Indian civilisation.

This dichotomy of little and great tradition in a way stands for 'high-culture' and 'low-culture' or 'folk and classical culture' or 'popular and learnt traditions'. Milton Singer uses 'hierarchic and low -culture'. In a civilization, there is a great tradition of the reflective few, and there is a little tradition of largely unreflective many. The great tradition is cultivated in schools or temples. The little tradition works itself out and keeps itself going in the lives of the unlettered in their village communities. The tradition of the philosopher, theologia and literati man is a tradition consciously cultivated and handed down; that of the little people is for the most part taken for granted and not submitted to such scrutiny and considered refinement and improvement.

If we enter a village within a civilisation we see at once that the culture there has been flowing into it from teachers and exemplars who never saw that village, who did their work in intellectual circles for way from the village in space and time.

The two traditions are interdependent. Great tradition and little tradition have long affected each other and continued to do so. Great epics have arisen out of elements of traditional tale-telling by many people, and epics have returned again to the peasantry for modification and incorporation into local culture. Great and little tradition can be thought of as two currents of thought and action, distinguishable, yet ever flowing into and out of each other. A picture of their relationships would be something like those 'histo-maps' we sometimes see, those diagrams of the rise and change through the time of religions and civilisations. Teachings are invented and they are continually understood by peasants in ways not intended by the teachers. Therefore, great and little tradition can be thought of as two currents.

The two traditions are not distinguishable in very isolated tribes. Among the Andaman Islanders we find nothing at all about any esoteric aspect of religion or thought. An older person may be likely to know what there is to known as any other. There are differences between laymen and specialists in the understanding of the religion. In a primitive tribe this sort of dichotomy is similar to the difference between the great tradition and little tradition in respect of civilisation and peasant society, respectively. The folk or tribal society constitutes a proto-dimension of peasant society. As it has been discussed earlier, some tribal societies or sections thereof are under the influence of the process of Hinduisation.

Origin of Little and Great Traditions!

It was Redfield who talked about little community. For him little community was a village that had smaller size, self-sufficient and relatively isolated.

Redfield did not mention anything about traditions or great traditions. Singer and Marriott who were influenced by studies made by Redfield conducted their intensive study in Indian villages. They elaborated the original model of Redfield in the light of data generated from India villages. Yogendra Singh has commented upon the construction of lit­tle and great traditions in Indian villages by these two anthropologists.

According to him:

Influenced by this model (of Robert Redfield), Milton Singer and Mckim Marriott had conducted some studies on social change in In­dia utilising this conceptual framework. The basic ideas in this approach are ‘civilisation’, and ‘social organisation of tradition’.

It is based on the evolutionary view that civilisation or the structure of tradition (which consists of both cultural and social structures) grows in two stages: first, through orthogenetic or indigenous evolution, and second, through heterogenetic encounters or contacts with other cultures or civilisations.

The Indian social structure, in a broader way, is stratified into two divisions:

(1) the folks or the unlettered peasantry, and

(2) the elites.

The folks and peasantry follow the little tradition, i.e., the village tra­dition. The second division of elites follows the great tradition. The great tradition consists of the traditions contained in epics, Puranas, Brahmanas and other classical sanskritic works. The roles and statuses of Sita and Draupadi constitute the parts of great tradition. The little tradition, on the other hand, is local tradition of great tradition tai­lored according to the regional and village conditions.

The great tradition is found clearly in twice-born castes, specially, priests, and ritual leaders of one kind or other. Some of these corporate groups follow the traits of civilisation and the great tradition. The car­riers of little tradition include folk artists, medicine men, tellers of riddles, proverbs and stories, poets and dancers, etc.

Little and great traditions help to analyse social change in rural In­dia. The nature of this change is basically cultural. There is a constant interaction between great tradition and little tradition. The interac­tion between the two traditions brings about change in rural society.

Yogendra Singh explains this interaction as below:

Changes in the cultural system follow through the interaction be­tween the two traditions in the orthogenetic or heterogenetic process of individual growth. The pattern of change, however, is generally from orthogenetic to heterogenetic forms of differentiation or change in the cultural structure of traditions.

Both Singer and Marriott argue on the strength of data generated from the villages of their study that the cultural content of social structure at the level of little tradition in a village witnesses changes. First, there is change in village culture due to the internal growth of village.

In other words, the little tradition witnesses changes due to its own internal growth. Second, the little tradition also undergoes change due to its contact with great tradition and other parts of the wider civilisation. “The direction of this change presumably is from folk or peasant to urban cultural structure and social organisation.” The great tradition, i.e., the epic tradition also witnesses universalised pattern of culture resulting from its interaction with the village or lit­tle tradition.

Singer has made certain statements about cultural change in rural India. His observations are as under:

1. The Indian civilisation has evolved out of pre-existing folk and re­gional cultures. This aspect of civilisation constructed the great tradition—Ramayana, Mahabharata and other religious scriptures. This great tradition maintained its continuity in India’s diverse re­gions, villages, castes and tribes.

2. The cultural continuity of great tradition is based on the idea that people share common cultural consciousness throughout the country.

3. The common cultural consciousness is formed through the con­sensus held in common about sacred books and sacred objects.

4. In India cultural continuity with the past is so great that even the acceptance of modernising and progress ideologies does not result in linear form of social and cultural change but may result in the traditionalising of apparently modern innovations.

To conclude it could be safely said that there is one cultural ap­proach out of several to explain rural social change in India. In simple words, one could say that a villager borrows norms and values from the great traditions of country’s civilisation.

In this borrowing he makes changes according to his village’s local conditions and history. The villages vary from region to region and, therefore, the little tradi­tion also continues to remain diverse. On the other hand, the great tradition, i.e., the sacred books, also receives a uniform pattern. The concepts, therefore, explain the cultural change both at regional and national levels.

Parochialisation and Universalisation!

Parochialisation and universalisation are supplementary to the con­cepts of little and great traditions. These are processes of cultural change. When the great tradition, i.e., the tradition of epics and sacred books undergoes change at the local or village level, it is parochialisa­tion or localisation of great tradition or civilisation. Parochialisation, therefore, is the cultural change made at the village level.

Universalisation, on the other hand, is a cultural change from lit­tle tradition to great tradition. Both these processes are related to the interaction between little tradition and great tradition. Interpreting the process of universalisation, Yogendra Singh observes that when the little tradition moves upward to the great tradition, it is the proc­ess of universalisation. And, when the great tradition moves downward to the local or village level, it is parochialisation.

His inter­pretation runs as below:

Elements of the little tradition, indigenous customs, duties and rites circulate upward to the level of the great tradition and are identified with its legitimate forms. This process Marriott calls ‘universalisa­tion’. Likewise, some elements of the great tradition also circulate downward to become organic past of the little tradition, and lose much of their original form in the process. He (McKim Marriott) used the term ‘parochialisation’ to denote this kind of transaction be­tween the two traditions.

In the process of parochialisation, obviously, there is some loss of the elements of great tradition. Whatever is laid down as elements of great tradition is reduced at village level or interpreted differently by local leaders of priestly castes. In this process there is de-sanskritisation.