Sociology

Little and Great Tradition

The concepts of ‘Great Tradition’ and ‘Little Tradition’ were put forward by Robert Redfield, an American anthropologist, through his study ‘Peasant Society and Culture’ in Mexico. Later, these concepts were taken up by Milton Singer and Mckim Marriott in their respective studies in India – Milton Singer in ‘Structure and Change in Indian Society’ and Mckim Marriott in ‘Village India’.

The origin of little and great traditions is from Robert Redfield, who talked about little community. For him, the two traditions are interdependent. Great Tradition and Little Tradition have long affected each other and continue to do so. Singer and Marriott, who was influenced by Redfield’s studies, undertook intense studies in Indian villages. They elaborated the original model of Redfield in light of data generated from Indian villages. Yogendra Singh has commented upon the construction of little and great traditions in Indian villages by these two anthropologists.

The whole of Indian culture can be studied with the help of these two concepts, ‘Little Tradition’ and ‘Great Tradition’ these traditions are mainly bipolar. These two concepts are based on the idea that civilization and social organization have a tradition. Little Tradition and Great Tradition is a conceptual approach that helps in the study of social change in India. Before going into the concepts of ‘Little Tradition’ and ‘Great Tradition’, let us first understand what ‘Tradition’ is.

TRADITION

The term tradition owes’ its origin to the word ‘tradere’, which means ‘to transmit.’ Thus, we see that tradition is the transmitted value and behaviour of any community which has been persisting over a period of time. Traditions are respected, exemplified and referred to frequently. In the process of socialization, members of a community are taught to appreciate, revere and respect traditions. Traditions do not remain static; they are not like stagnant water. Old or previous traditions fade away and become extinct and new ones continue to evolve and be adopted by a community. External as well as internal factors, both, contribute to the changes in tradition. In order to understand the comprehensive meaning of tradition and to capture its spirit, one has to go beyond its usual explanation of ‘transmission’. The spirit of tradition lies in its value. If the element of value is removed from tradition, it would be difficult to differentiate between tradition and custom. A number of customs may continue to be alive and practised even without the element of value, pushed and maintained by negative forces like inertia.

Little Tradition and Great Tradition

The approach to analysing social change with the help of the concepts of Little and Great Traditions was used by Robert Redfield. He and his students studied a number of folk and urban communities in Mexico and India and came up with many important concepts to understand the structure and persistence of civilizations.

Redfield viewed civilization as a complex organization of tradition. These traditions are mainly bipolar and are also to be treated as dimensions of civilization along with tribal, rural and urban. The basic ideas in this approach are ‘civilization’ and ‘social organization of tradition’. It is based on the evolutionary view that civilization 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 civilizations) The social structure of these civilizations operates at two levels, first that of the folks or unlettered peasants, and second, that of the elite or the ‘reflective few’. The cultural processes in the former comprise the Little tradition and those in the latter constitute the Great tradition. There is, however, a constant interaction between the two levels of traditions.

In any society, both traditions can be found. There are fewer traditions which are formal, literate, written, reflective and ideal, on the other hand, are informal, illiterate, unreflective and actual. The former are Great Tradition, the latter the Little Tradition. They are mutually complementary interdependent and interactive. The Great Traditions originated, preserved and propagated by the learned few in cultural and religious centres and disseminated throughout the civilization region. The Little Traditions are part of folk or rural life. The Great Traditions are the ideals of thought and behaviour, and the Little Traditions are the actual behaviour of the great majority of people in rural areas.

The elements of Great Tradition are spread throughout the civilization and are to be found as parts of Little Traditions, which modify them to suit their own cognitive world.

“The tradition of the philosopher, theologian, and literary 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 much scrutiny or considered refinement and improvement. If we enter a village within a civilization, 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 perhaps far away in space and time” (Redfield, 1958, 70-71).

“Great tradition and little tradition have long affected each other and continue to do so” (Redfield, 1958, 71). Both can be thought of as two currents of thought and action, distinguishable, yet ever flowing into and out of each other. “Great epics in any civilization have their origins in tale-telling by many people and returned again to them for incorporation into local cultures. The ethic of the Old Testament arose out of tribal peoples and returned to peasant communities after they had been the subject of thought by philosophers and theologians” (Redfield, 1958, 71-72). So arose Ramayan and Quran.

In other words, and in a very loose analogy with the research process, it can be said that the experience and perceptions of local people in every hook and corner of civilization region from the data which are analyzed and theorized by philosophers, thinkers, priests and teachers at Great traditional centres and returned to the local communities again in a compact form, which is part of a heritage, a Great Tradition, of the whole civilization not just say specific hook or corner of the civilization.

The difference between the two traditions is basically that of text and context. The contents of the text of the great tradition are expressed or manifested in the context of little traditional village life.

In a concrete example from India, Redfield (1958, 87-89) writes, “….the worldview of the little traditions of India is on the whole polytheistic, magical, and unphilosophical, while the different strands of the great Vedic tradition choose different intellectual and ethical emphases: the Vedas tend to be polytheistic and poetical, the Upanishads abstract, monistic, and not very theistic, while the important Vaishnavaism and Shaivism are theistic and ethical.”

“The Ramayana is the ancient source widely influential in village India today. Derived from oral tales, it was fashioned into a Sanskrit epic by …. Valmiki and so became part of India’s Great Tradition.”

Later this Ramayan was translated into many Indian languages. Its Hindi translation, “Ramcharitmanas” by Tulsi Das, became the most prized possession and its content is one of the most revered traditions of Hindu India. It contains many interpolations. It is recited in every home and dramatized in popular form, the Ram Lila, thus becoming once again a part of Little Tradition.

However, little traditions and great traditions are not neatly differentiated along a rural-urban axis. Both kinds of traditions may be found in villages and in cities in different forms. The Inspiration for the great traditions is found partially in the existing little traditions from which the elite has sprung. There is no precise definition of great tradition and little tradition. Both traditions are Incomplete by themselves and there is no clash of fundamental interests between them.

Interaction between Little and Great Tradition

Society can be looked upon as a process, a series of interactions between human beings where each person responds to the stimuli of another person. No social life is possible except such interaction and this communication is the basis of all social life. The whole human society and each group in the society can be viewed as the manifestation of the social processes between the interacting members. These interactions ultimately form the social structure and the norms, values and customs related to these social relationships determine the cultural aspects of a human being. In the Indian context, the term culture has been derived from the Sanskrit word Sanskriti. Both the terms have been composed of the term Sanskar, which means satisfaction of total rituals, which may be applied to the ways of life for living common at any one time to all mankind. The term civilization is regarded as a changed or developed stage of culture. This was marked by the organization of complexities, heterogeneities and certainties.

Little Tradition and Great Tradition interact with each other and also these two are interdependent in India. The concepts of universalization and Parohialization also describe the process of cultural change implied by Sanskritization, specially universalization comes very close to the concept. Some social scientists feel that Indian society or culture could not be described entirely with the help of Little Tradition and Great Tradition.

Moreover, it would be wrong to visualize these two types in isolation; rather there has been a continuous interaction between ‘Great Tradition’ and ‘Little Tradition’. In this context, McKim Marriott has conceptualized two processes – ‘Universalization’ and ‘Parochialization’.

1. Universalization: It refers to the process by which ‘Little Tradition’ gets diffused to the so-called elite, educated people and becomes a part of ‘Great Tradition’. Example – The Ayyappa cult, i.e., worshipping of Lord Ayyappa Swamy, was earlier confined to only a few places around Sabarimala; but over the decades, the deity has emerged as a pan-Indian God.

2. Parochialization: It refers to the process by which ‘Great Tradition’ is imbibed by the ‘unlettered’ masses and becomes a part of ‘Little Tradition’. Example- N.K. Bose, in his study, showed how the Juang tribe adopted some Hindu rituals.

Thus, the concept of ‘Little Tradition’ and ‘Great Tradition’ is limited in the sense that it mostly confines themselves to the cultural sphere. Also, the nomenclature ‘Little’ and ‘Great’ dichotomy appears to be somewhat ambiguous. Nonetheless, these two concepts remain an essential conceptual tool for understanding and analysing a civilization.

Significance of great tradition and little tradition in village studied in India

The concepts of little and great traditions also stand for change in the rural caste system. Both these concepts are constructed by Milton Singer and Mckim Marriott. The origin of little and great traditions is from Robert Redfield, who conducted his studies in Mexican communities. It was Redfield who talked about little community. For him, a little community was a village that had a smaller size, was self-sufficient and was relatively isolated. Redfield did not mention anything about traditions or great traditions. Singer and Marriott, who was influenced by studies made by Redfield, conducted their intensive study in Indian villages. They elaborated the original model of Redfield in light of data generated from Indian villages. Yogendra Singh has commented upon the construction of little and great traditions in Indian villages by these two anthropologists.

Influenced by this model (of Robert Redfield), Milton Singer and Mckim Marriott conducted 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

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 parts of Great Tradition. The Little Tradition, on the other hand, is a local tradition of Great Tradition tailored according to regional and village conditions.

The Great Tradition is found clearly in twice-born castes, specially, priests, and ritual leaders of one kind or another. Some of these corporate groups follow the traits of civilisation and 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 the 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 a change in rural society. Yogendra Singh explains this interaction as the changes in the cultural system following 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 a change in village culture due to the internal growth of the 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 broader civilisation. This change is most likely moving away from rural or peasant cultural organisation and towards urban culture. 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 of 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 ordinary cultural consciousness throughout the country.

3. The shared 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 progressive ideologies does not result in a linear form of social and cultural change but may result in the traditionalising of apparently modem innovations.

One cultural explanation for the rural social shift in India could be argued to exist, among others. To put it plainly, one may say that a villager adopts the major customs and ideals of the nation’s civilization. He adapts this borrowing to the local circumstances and historical context of his village. Since the villages differ from one region to the next, the small amount of tradition also continues to be varied. On the other hand, the Great Tradition—the holy books—also follows a consistent pattern. Therefore, both at a regional and national level, the notions describe the cultural change.