Oral tradition, or oral lore, is a form of human communication in which knowledge, art, ideas and culture are received, preserved, and transmitted orally from one generation to another.[1] [2] The transmission is through speech or song and may include folktales, ballads, chants, prose or poetry. It is a medium of communication for a society to transmit oral history, oral literature, oral law and other knowledge across generations without a writing system, or in parallel to a writing system.
Religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Catholicism,[3] and Jainism have used oral tradition, in parallel to writing, to transmit their canonical scriptures, rituals, hymns and mythologies.[4] [5] Sub-Saharan African societies have broadly been labelled as oral civilisations, contrasted with literate civilisations, due to their reverence for the spoken over the written word.[6] [7]
Oral tradition is memories, knowledge, and expression held in common by a group over many generations: it is the long preservation of immediate or contemporaneous testimony.[1] [8] It may be defined as the recall and transmission of specific, preserved textual and cultural knowledge through vocal utterance.[9]
As an academic discipline, oral tradition refers both to objects and methods of study.[10] It is distinct from oral history,[8] which is the recording of personal testimony of those who experienced historical eras or events.[11] Oral tradition is also distinct from the study of orality, defined as thought and its verbal expression in societies where the technologies of literacy (writing and print) are unfamiliar.[12] Folklore is one albeit not the only type of oral tradition.[13] [14]
According to John Foley, oral tradition has been an ancient human tradition found in "all corners of the world". Modern archaeology has been unveiling evidence of the human efforts to preserve and transmit arts and knowledge that depended completely or partially on an oral tradition, across various cultures:
All indigenous African societies use oral tradition to learn their origin and history, civic and religious duties, crafts and skills, as well as traditional myths and legends.[15] It is also a key socio-cultural component in the practice of their traditional spiritualities, as well as mainstream Abrahamic religions.[16] The prioritisation of the spoken word is evidenced by African societies having chosen to record history orally whilst some had developed or had access to a writing script. Jan Vansina differentiates between oral and literate civilisations, stating: "The attitude of members of an oral society toward speech is similar to the reverence members of a literate society attach to the written word. If it is hallowed by authority or antiquity, the word will be treasured." For centuries in Europe, all data felt to be important were written down, with the most important texts prioritised, such as Bible, and only trivia, such as song, legend, anecdote, and proverbs remained unrecorded. In Africa, all the principal political, legal, social, and religious texts were transmitted orally. When the Bamums in Cameroon invented a script, the first to be written down was the royal chronicle and the code of customary law. Most African courts had archivists who learnt by heart the royal genealogy and history of the state, and served as its unwritten constitution.
The performance of a tradition is accentuated and rendered alive by various gesture, social conventions and the unique occasion in which it is performed.[17] Furthermore, the climate in which traditions are told influences its content. In Burundi, traditions were short because most of them were told at informal gatherings and everyone had to have his say during the evening; in neighbouring Rwanda, many narratives were spun-out because a one-man professional had to entertain his patron for a whole evening, with every production checked by fellow specialists and errors punishable. Frequently, glosses or commentaries were presented parallel to the narrative, sometimes answering questions from the audience to ensure understanding, although often someone would learn a tradition without asking their master questions and not really understand the meaning of its content, leading them to speculate in the commentary.[18] Oral traditions only exist when they are told, except for in people's minds, and so the frequency of telling a tradition aids its preservation.[19] These African ethnic groups also utilize oral tradition to develop and train the human intellect, and the memory to retain information and sharpen imagination.
See also: Griot, History of the Soninke people, Oral history in modern Mali, Epic of Sundiata, Kouroukan Fouga, Kwagh-Hir, Gassire's lute, Oríkì, Mbeku, Agadzagadza, Asebu Amanfi and Anansi. Perhaps the most famous repository of oral tradition is the west African griot (named differently in different languages). The griot is a hereditary position and exists in Dyula, Soninke, Fula, Hausa, Songhai, Wolof, Serer, and Mossi societies among many others, although more famously in Mandinka society. They constitute a caste and perform a range of roles, including as a historian or library, musician, poet, mediator of family and tribal disputes, spokesperson, and served in the king's court, not dissimilar from the European bard. They keep records of all births, death, and marriages through the generations of the village or family. When Sundiata Keita founded the Mali Empire, he was offered Balla Fasséké as his griot to advise him during his reign, giving rise to the Kouyate line of griots. Griots often accompany their telling of oral tradition with a musical instrument, as the Epic of Sundiata is accompanied by the balafon, or as the kora accompanies other traditions. In modern times, some griots and descendants of griots have dropped their historian role and focus on music, with many finding success, however many still maintain their traditional roles.
See also: Empire of Kitara, Kilwa Chronicle, Hainteny, Ebyevugo, Ibonia, Fumo Liyongo, Ibitekerezo and Azmari.
See also: Malhun, T'heydinn and Asefru.
See also: Mwindo epic.
See also: The Child with a Moon on his Chest (Sotho), South African folklore, Afrikaans folklore and Emperor Shaka the Great.
Albanian traditions have been handed down orally across generations.[20] They have been preserved through traditional memory systems that have survived intact into modern times in Albania, a phenomenon that is explained by the lack of state formation among Albanians and their ancestors – the Illyrians, being able to preserve their "tribally" organized society. This distinguished them from civilizations such as Ancient Egypt, Minoans and Mycenaeans, who underwent state formation.
Albanian epic poetry has been analysed by Homeric scholars to acquire a better understanding of Homeric epics. The long oral tradition that has sustained Albanian epic poetry reinforces the idea that pre-Homeric epic poetry was oral. The theory of oral-formulaic composition was developed also through the scholarly study of Albanian epic verse. The Albanian traditional singing of epic verse from memory is one of the last survivors of its kind in modern Europe,[21] and the last survivor of the Balkan traditions.[22]
See also: Rhapsode and Aoidos. "All ancient Greek literature", states Steve Reece, "was to some degree oral in nature, and the earliest literature was completely so".[23] Homer's epic poetry, states Michael Gagarin, "was largely composed, performed and transmitted orally".[24] As folklores and legends were performed in front of distant audiences, the singers would substitute the names in the stories with local characters or rulers to give the stories a local flavor and thus connect with the audience, but making the historicity embedded in the oral tradition unreliable.[25] The lack of surviving texts about the Greek and Roman religious traditions have led scholars to presume that these were ritualistic and transmitted as oral traditions, but some scholars disagree that the complex rituals in the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations were an exclusive product of an oral tradition.[26]
An Irish seanchaí (plural: seanchaithe), meaning bearer of "old lore", was a traditional Irish language storyteller (the Scottish Gaelic equivalent being the seanchaidh, anglicised as shanachie). The job of a seanchaí was to serve the head of a lineage by passing information orally from one generation to the next about Irish folklore and history, particularly in medieval times.[27]
In Asia, the transmission of folklore, mythologies as well as scriptures in ancient India, in different Indian religions, was by oral tradition, preserved with precision with the help of elaborate mnemonic techniques:[28]
According to Goody, the Vedic texts likely involved both a written and oral tradition, calling it a "parallel products of a literate society".[4] [5] Mostly recently, research shows that oral performance of (written) texts could be a philosophical activity in early China.[29]
It is a common knowledge in India that the primary Hindu books called Vedas are great example of Oral tradition. Pundits who memorized three Vedas were called Trivedis. Pundits who memorized four vedas were called Chaturvedis. By transferring knowledge from generation to generation Hindus protected their ancient Mantras in Vedas, which are basically Prose.
The early Buddhist texts are also generally believed to be of oral tradition, with the first by comparing inconsistencies in the transmitted versions of literature from various oral societies such as the Greek, Serbia and other cultures, then noting that the Vedic literature is too consistent and vast to have been composed and transmitted orally across generations, without being written down.[4]
See also: Oral Torah. In the Middle East, Arabic oral tradition has significantly influenced literary and cultural practices.[30] Arabic oral tradition encompassed various forms of expression, including metrical poetry, unrhymed prose, rhymed prose (saj'), and prosimetrum—a combination of prose and poetry often employed in historical narratives. Poetry held a position of particular importance, as it was believed to be a more reliable medium for information transmission than prose. This belief stemmed from observations that highly structured language, with its rhythmic and phonetic patterns, tended to undergo fewer alterations during oral transmission.[31]
Each genre of rhymed poetry served distinct social and cultural functions. These range from spontaneous compositions at celebrations to carefully crafted historical accounts, political commentaries, and entertainment pieces. Among these, the folk epics known as siyar (singular: sīra) were considered the most intricate. These prosimetric narratives, combining prose and verse, emerged in the early Middle Ages. While many such epics circulated historically, only one has survived as a sung oral poetic tradition: Sīrat Banī Hilāl. This epic recounts the westward migration and conquests of the Banu Hilal Bedouin tribe from the 10th to 12th centuries, culminating in their rule over parts of North Africa before their eventual defeat.[32] The historical roots of Sīrat Banī Hilāl are evident in the present-day distribution of groups claiming descent from the tribe across North Africa and parts of the Middle East. The epic's development into a cohesive narrative was first documented by the historian Ibn Khaldūn in the 14th century. In his writings, Ibn Khaldūn describes collecting stories and poems from nomadic Arabs, using these oral sources to discuss the merits of colloquial versus classical poetry and the value of oral histories in written historical works.[33]
The Torah and other ancient Jewish literature, the Judeo-Christian Bible and texts of early centuries of Christianity are rooted in an oral tradition, and the term "People of the Book" is a medieval construct.[34] [35] This is evidenced, for example, by the multiple scriptural statements by Paul admitting "previously remembered tradition which he received" orally.[36]
Australian Aboriginal culture has thrived on oral traditions and oral histories passed down through thousands of years.In a study published in February 2020, new evidence showed that both Budj Bim and Tower Hill volcanoes erupted between 34,000 and 40,000 years ago.[37] Significantly, this is a "minimum age constraint for human presence in Victoria", and also could be interpreted as evidence for the oral histories of the Gunditjmara people, an Aboriginal Australian people of south-western Victoria, which tell of volcanic eruptions being some of the oldest oral traditions in existence.[38] A basalt stone axe found underneath volcanic ash in 1947 had already proven that humans inhabited the region before the eruption of Tower Hill.[37]
Writing systems are not known to exist among Native North Americans before contact with Europeans except among some Mesoamerican cultures, and possibly the South American quipu and North American wampum, although those two are debatable. Oral storytelling traditions flourished in a context without the use of writing to record and preserve history, scientific knowledge, and social practices.[39] While some stories were told for amusement and leisure, most functioned as practical lessons from tribal experience applied to immediate moral, social, psychological, and environmental issues.[40] Stories fuse fictional, supernatural, or otherwise exaggerated characters and circumstances with real emotions and morals as a means of teaching. Plots often reflect real life situations and may be aimed at particular people known by the story's audience. In this way, social pressure could be exerted without directly causing embarrassment or social exclusion.[41] For example, rather than yelling, Inuit parents might deter their children from wandering too close to the water's edge by telling a story about a sea monster with a pouch for children within its reach.[42] One single story could provide dozens of lessons.[43] Stories were also used as a means to assess whether traditional cultural ideas and practices are effective in tackling contemporary circumstances or if they should be revised.[44]
Native American storytelling is a collaborative experience between storyteller and listeners. Native American tribes generally have not had professional tribal storytellers marked by social status.[45] Stories could and can be told by anyone, with each storyteller using their own vocal inflections, word choice, content, or form. Storytellers not only draw upon their own memories, but also upon a collective or tribal memory extending beyond personal experience but nevertheless representing a shared reality.[46] Native languages have in some cases up to twenty words to describe physical features like rain or snow and can describe the spectra of human emotion in very precise ways, allowing storytellers to offer their own personalized take on a story based on their own lived experiences.[47] [48] Fluidity in story deliverance allowed stories to be applied to different social circumstances according to the storyteller's objective at the time. One's rendition of a story was often considered a response to another's rendition, with plot alterations suggesting alternative ways of applying traditional ideas to present conditions. Listeners might have heard the story told many times, or even may have told the same story themselves. This does not take away from a story's meaning, as curiosity about what happens next was less of a priority than hearing fresh perspectives on well-known themes and plots. Elder storytellers generally were not concerned with discrepancies between their version of historical events and neighboring tribes' version of similar events, such as in origin stories. Tribal stories are considered valid within the tribe's own frame of reference and tribal experience. The 19th century Oglala Lakota tribal member Four Guns was known for his justification of the oral tradition and criticism of the written word.[49] [50]
Stories are used to preserve and transmit both tribal history and environmental history, which are often closely linked. Native oral traditions in the Pacific Northwest, for example, describe natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis. Various cultures from Vancouver Island and Washington have stories describing a physical struggle between a Thunderbird and a Whale.[51] One such story tells of the Thunderbird, which can create thunder by moving just a feather, piercing the Whale's flesh with its talons, causing the Whale to dive to the bottom of the ocean, bringing the Thunderbird with it. Another depicts the Thunderbird lifting the Whale from the Earth then dropping it back down. Regional similarities in themes and characters suggests that these stories mutually describe the lived experience of earthquakes and floods within tribal memory. According to one story from the Suquamish Tribe, Agate Pass was created when an earthquake expanded the channel as a result of an underwater battle between a serpent and bird. Other stories in the region depict the formation of glacial valleys and moraines and the occurrence of landslides, with stories being used in at least one case to identify and date earthquakes that occurred in 900 CE and 1700. Further examples include Arikara origin stories of emergence from an "underworld" of persistent darkness, which may represent the remembrance of life in the Arctic Circle during the last ice age, and stories involving a "deep crevice", which may refer to the Grand Canyon.[52] Despite such examples of agreement between geological and archeological records on one hand and Native oral records on the other, some scholars have cautioned against the historical validity of oral traditions because of their susceptibility to detail alteration over time and lack of precise dates.[53] The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act considers oral traditions as a viable source of evidence for establishing the affiliation between cultural objects and Native Nations.
Oral traditions face the challenge of accurate transmission and verifiability of the accurate version, particularly when the culture lacks written language or has limited access to writing tools. Oral cultures have employed various strategies that achieve this without writing. For example, a heavily rhythmic speech filled with mnemonic devices enhances memory and recall. A few useful mnemonic devices include alliteration, repetition, assonance, and proverbial sayings. In addition, the verse is often metrically composed with an exact number of syllables or morae—such as with Greek and Latin prosody and in Chandas found in Hindu and Buddhist texts.[54] The verses of the epic or text are typically designed wherein the long and short syllables are repeated by certain rules, so that if an error or inadvertent change is made, an internal examination of the verse reveals the problem.[55] Oral traditions can be passed on through plays and acting, as shown in modern-day Cameroon by the Graffis or Grasslanders who perform and deliver speeches to teach their history through oral tradition.[56] Such strategies facilitate transmission of information without a written intermediate, and they can also be applied to oral governance.[57]
See main article: Oral law.
| The law itself in oral cultures is enshrined in formulaic sayings, proverbs, which are not mere jurisprudential decorations, but themselves constitute the law. A judge in an oral culture is often called on to articulate sets of relevant proverbs out of which he can make equitable decisions in the cases under formal litigation before him. |
Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book provides an excellent demonstration of oral governance in the Law of the Jungle. Not only does grounding rules in oral proverbs allow for simple transmission and understanding, but it also legitimizes new rulings by allowing extrapolation. These stories, traditions, and proverbs are not static, but are often altered upon each transmission, barring any change to the overall meaning.[58] In this way, the rules that govern the people are modified by the whole and not authored by a single entity.
Ancient texts of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism were preserved and transmitted by an oral tradition.[59] [60] For example, the śrutis of Hinduism called the Vedas, the oldest of which trace back to the second millennium BCE. Michael Witzel explains this oral tradition as follows:
Ancient Indians developed techniques for listening, memorization and recitation of their knowledge, in schools called Gurukul, while maintaining exceptional accuracy of their knowledge across the generations.[61] Many forms of recitation or pathas were designed to aid accuracy in recitation and the transmission of the Vedas and other knowledge texts from one generation to the next. All hymns in each Veda were recited in this way; for example, all 1,028 hymns with 10,600 verses of the Rigveda was preserved in this way; as were all other Vedas including the Principal Upanishads, as well as the Vedangas. Each text was recited in a number of ways, to ensure that the different methods of recitation acted as a cross check on the other. Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat summarizes this as:
These extraordinary retention techniques guaranteed an accurate Śruti, fixed across the generations, not just in terms of unaltered word order but also in terms of sound.[61] [62] That these methods have been effective, is testified to by the preservation of the most ancient Indian religious text, the .[63]
Research by Milman Parry and Albert Lord indicates that the verse of the Greek poet Homer has been passed down not by rote memorization but by "oral-formulaic composition". In this process, extempore composition is aided by use of stock phrases or "formulas" (expressions that are used regularly "under the same metrical conditions, to express a particular essential idea").[64] In the case of the work of Homer, formulas included eos rhododaktylos ("rosy fingered dawn") and oinops pontos ("winedark sea") which fit in a modular fashion into the poetic form (in this case six-colon Greek hexameter). Since the development of this theory, of oral-formulaic composition has been "found in many different time periods and many different cultures",[65] and according to another source (John Miles Foley) "touch[ed] on" over 100 "ancient, medieval and modern traditions."[66] [67] [68]
The most recent of the world's major religions,[69] Islam claims two major sources of divine revelation—the Quran and hadith—compiled in written form relatively shortly after being revealed:[70]
The oral milieu in which the sources were revealed, and their oral form in general are important. The Arab poetry that preceded the Quran and the hadith were orally transmitted.[71] Few Arabs were literate at the time and paper was not available in the Middle East.[72]
The written Quran is said to have been created in part through memorization by Muhammad's companions, and the decision to create a standard written work is said to have come after the death in battle (Yamama) of a large number of Muslims who had memorized the work.[73]
For centuries, copies of the Qurans were transcribed by hand, not printed, and their scarcity and expense made reciting the Quran from memory, not reading, the predominant mode of teaching it to others. To this day the Quran is memorized by millions and its recitation can be heard throughout the Muslim world from recordings and mosque loudspeakers (during Ramadan).[74] Muslims state that some who teach memorization/recitation of the Quran constitute the end of an "un-broken chain" whose original teacher was Muhammad himself.[75] It has been argued that "the Qur'an's rhythmic style and eloquent expression make it easy to memorize," and was made so to facilitate the "preservation and remembrance" of the work.[76]
Islamic doctrine holds that from the time it was revealed to the present day, the Quran has not been altered, its continuity from divine revelation to its current written form insured by the large numbers of Muhammad's supporters who had reverently memorized the work, a careful compiling process and divine intervention.[73] (Muslim scholars agree that although scholars have worked hard to separate the corrupt and uncorrupted hadith, this other source of revelation is not nearly so free of corruption because of the hadith's great political and theological influence.)
At least two non-Muslim scholars (Alan Dundes and Andrew G. Bannister) have examined the possibility that the Quran was not just "recited orally, but actually composed orally".[77] Bannister postulates that some parts of the Quran—such as the seven re-tellings of the story of the Iblis and Adam, and the repeated phrases "which of the favours of your Lord will you deny?" in sura 55—make more sense addressed to listeners than readers.[71]
Banister, Dundes and other scholars (Shabbir Akhtar, Angelika Neuwirth, Islam Dayeh)[78] have also noted the large amount of "formulaic" phraseology in the Quran consistent with "oral-formulaic composition" mentioned above.[79] The most common formulas are the attributes of Allah—all-mighty, all-wise, all-knowing, all-high, etc.—often found as doublets at the end of a verse. Among the other repeated phrases are "Allah created the heavens and the earth" (found 19 times in the Quran).[80] [81]
As much as one third of the Quran is made up of "oral formulas", according to Dundes' estimates.[82] Bannister, using a computer database of (the original Arabic) words of the Quran and of their "grammatical role, root, number, person, gender and so forth", estimates that depending on the length of the phrase searched, somewhere between 52% (three word phrases) and 23% (five word phrases) are oral formulas.[83] Dundes reckons his estimates confirm "that the Quran was orally transmitted from its very beginnings". Bannister believes his estimates "provide strong corroborative evidence that oral composition should be seriously considered as we reflect upon how the Qur'anic text was generated."[84]
Dundes argues oral-formulaic composition is consistent with "the cultural context of Arabic oral tradition", quoting researchers who have found poetry reciters in the Najd (the region next to where the Quran was revealed) using "a common store of themes, motives, stock images, phraseology and prosodical options",[85] [86] and "a discursive and loosely structured" style "with no fixed beginning or end" and "no established sequence in which the episodes must follow".