Oral tradition

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] These African ethnic group also utilize oral tradition to develop and train the human intellect, and memory to retain information and sharpen imagination.[15]

"All ancient Greek literature", states Steve Reece, "was to some degree oral in nature, and the earliest literature was completely so".[17] Homer's epic poetry, states Michael Gagarin, "was largely composed, performed and transmitted orally".[18] 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.[19] 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.[20] 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.[9][21][22] This is evidenced, for example, by the multiple scriptural statements by Paul admitting "previously remembered tradition which he received" orally.[23]

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:[24]

According to Goody, the Vedic texts likely involved both a written and oral tradition, calling it a "parallel products of a literate society".[5][7] Mostly recently, research shows that oral performance of (written) texts could be a philosophical activity in early China.[25]

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.[5]

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.[26] 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.[27] A basalt stone axe found underneath volcanic ash in 1947 had already proven that humans inhabited the region before the eruption of Tower Hill.[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.[28] Seán Ó hEinirí of Cill Ghallagáin, County Mayo was thought to be the last seanachaí and the last monolingual speaker of the Irish language.

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.[29] 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.[30] 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.[31] 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.[32] One single story could provide dozens of lessons.[33] 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.[34]

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.[35] Stories could and can be told by anyone, with each storyteller using their own vocal inflections, word choice, content, or form.[31] 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.[36] 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.[37][38] Fluidity in story deliverance allowed stories to be applied to different social circumstances according to the storyteller's objective at the time.[31] 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.[31] Listeners might have heard the story told many times, or even may have told the same story themselves.[31] 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.[31] 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.[37] Tribal stories are considered valid within the tribe's own frame of reference and tribal experience.[37] The 19th century Oglala Lakota tribal member Four Guns was known for his justification of the oral tradition and criticism of the written word.[39][40]

Stories are used to preserve and transmit both tribal history and environmental history, which are often closely linked.[37] 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.[41] 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.[41] 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 CE 900 and 1700.[41] 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.[42] 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.[43] 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.[42]

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.[48] 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.[49][50] 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:[6]

The Vedic texts were orally composed and transmitted, without the use of script, in an unbroken line of transmission from teacher to student that was formalized early on. This ensured an impeccable textual transmission superior to the classical texts of other cultures; it is, in fact, something like a tape-recording... Not just the actual words, but even the long-lost musical (tonal) accent (as in old Greek or in Japanese) has been preserved up to the present.

— Michael Witzel[6]

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.[51] Many forms of recitation or paths 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:[52]

• Samhita-patha: continuous recitation of Sanskrit words bound by the phonetic rules of euphonic combination;
• Pada-patha: a recitation marked by a conscious pause after every word, and after any special grammatical codes embedded inside the text; this method suppresses euphonic combination and restores each word in its original intended form;
• Krama-patha: a step-by-step recitation where euphonically combined words are paired successively and sequentially and then recited; for example, a hymn "word1 word2 word3 word4...", would be recited as "word1word2 word2word3 word3word4 ...."; this method to verify accuracy is credited to Vedic sages Gargya and Sakarya in the Hindu tradition and mentioned by the ancient Sanskrit grammarian Panini (dated to pre-Buddhism period);
• Krama-patha modified: the same step-by-step recitation as above, but without euphonic-combinations (or free form of each word); this method to verify accuracy is credited to Vedic sages Babhravya and Galava in the Hindu tradition, and is also mentioned by the ancient Sanskrit grammarian Panini;
• Jata-pāṭha, dhvaja-pāṭha and ghana-pāṭha are methods of recitation of a text and its oral transmission that developed after 5th century BCE, that is after the start of Buddhism and Jainism; these methods use more complicated rules of combination and were less used.

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.[51][53] That these methods have been effective, is testified to by the preservation of the most ancient Indian religious text, the Ṛgveda (c. 1500 BCE).[52]

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").[54] 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",[55] and according to another source (John Miles Foley) "touch[ed] on" over 100 "ancient, medieval and modern traditions."[56][57][58]

The most recent of the world's major religions,[59] Islam claims two major sources of divine revelation—the Quran and hadith—compiled in written form relatively shortly after being revealed:[60]

• The Quran—meaning "recitation" in Arabic—is believed by Muslims to be God's revelation to the Islamic prophet Muhammad, delivered to him from 610 CE until his death in 632 CE. It is said to have been carefully compiled and edited into a standardized written form (known as the mushaf)[Note 1] about two decades after the last verse was revealed.
• Hadith—meaning "narrative" or "report" in Arabic—is the record of the words, actions, and the silent approval, of Muhammad, and was transmitted by "oral preachers and storytellers" for around 150–250 years. Each hadith includes the isnad (chain of human transmitters who passed down the tradition before it was sorted according to accuracy, compiled, and committed to written form by a reputable scholar.[Note 2]

The oral milieu in which the sources were revealed,[62] and their oral form in general are important.[63] The Arab poetry that preceded the Quran and the hadith were orally transmitted.[62] Few Arabs were literate at the time and paper was not available in the Middle East.[64][65]

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.[63]

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.[65] 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).[65][66] 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.[65] 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.[67]

Islamic doctrine holds that from the time it was revealed to the present day, the Quran has not been altered,[Note 3] 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.[63] (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".[69] 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.[62]

Banister, Dundes and other scholars (Shabbir Akhtar, Angelika Neuwirth, Islam Dayeh)[70] have also noted the large amount of "formulaic" phraseology in the Quran consistent with "oral-formulaic composition" mentioned above.[71] 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[Note 4] are "Allah created the heavens and the earth" (found 19 times in the Quran).[72][73]

As much as one third of the Quran is made up of "oral formulas", according to Dundes' estimates.[74] 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.[75] 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."[76]

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",[77][78] and "a discursive and loosely structured" style "with no fixed beginning or end" and "no established sequence in which the episodes must follow".{{ref|group=Note|Scholar Saad Sowayan referring to the genre of "Saudi Arabian historical oral narrative genre called suwalif"[79][80]

The Catholic Church upholds that its teaching contained in its deposit of faith is transmitted not only through scripture, but as well as through sacred tradition.[4] The Second Vatican Council affirmed in Dei verbum that the teachings of Jesus Christ were initially passed on to early Christians by "the Apostles who, by their oral preaching, by example, and by observance handed on what they had received from the lips of Christ, from living with Him, and from what He did".[81] The Catholic Church asserts that this mode of transmission of the faith persists through current-day bishops, who by right of apostolic succession, have continued the oral passing of what had been revealed through Christ through their preaching as teachers.[82]

Filip Višnjić (1767–1834), Serbian blind guslar

The following overview draws upon Oral-Formulaic Theory and Research: An Introduction and Annotated Bibliography, (NY: Garland Publishing, 1985, 1986, 1989); additional material is summarized from the overlapping prefaces to the following volumes: The Theory of Oral Composition: History and Methodology, (Indiana University Press, 1988, 1992); Immanent Art: From Structure to Meaning in Traditional Oral Epic (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991); The Singer of Tales in Performance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995) and Comparative Research on Oral Traditions: A Memorial for Milman Parry (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica Publishers, 1987). in the work of the Serb scholar Vuk Stefanović Karadžić (1787–1864), a contemporary and friend of the Brothers Grimm. Vuk pursued similar projects of "salvage folklore" (similar to rescue archaeology) in the cognate traditions of the South Slavic regions which would later be gathered into Yugoslavia, and with the same admixture of romantic and nationalistic interests (he considered all those speaking the Eastern Herzegovinian dialect as Serbs). Somewhat later, but as part of the same scholarly enterprise of nationalist studies in folklore,[83] the turcologist Vasily Radlov (1837–1918) would study the songs of the Kara-Kirghiz in what would later become the Soviet Union; Karadzic and Radloff would provide models for the work of Parry.

In a separate development, the media theorist Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) would begin to focus attention on the ways that communicative media shape the nature of the content conveyed.[84] He would serve as mentor to the Jesuit Walter Ong (1912–2003), whose interests in cultural history, psychology and rhetoric would result in Orality and Literacy (Methuen, 1980) and the important but less-known Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality and Consciousness (Cornell, 1981)[85] These two works articulated the contrasts between cultures defined by primary orality, writing, print, and the secondary orality of the electronic age.[86]

I style the morality of a culture totally untouched by any knowledge of writing or print, 'primary orality'. It is 'primary' by contrast with the 'secondary orality' of present-day high technology culture, in which a new orality is sustained by telephone, radio, television and other electronic devices that depend for their existence and functioning on writing and print. Today primary culture in the strict sense hardly exists, since every culture knows of writing and has some experience of its effects. Still, to varying degrees many cultures and sub-cultures, even in a high-technology ambiance, preserve much of the mind-set of primary orality.[87]

Ong's works also made possible an integrated theory of oral tradition which accounted for both production of content (the chief concern of Parry-Lord theory) and its reception.[86] This approach, like McLuhan's, kept the field open not just to the study of aesthetic culture but to the way physical and behavioral artifacts of oral societies are used to store, manage and transmit knowledge, so that oral tradition provides methods for investigation of cultural differences, other than the purely verbal, between oral and literate societies.

The most-often studied section of Orality and Literacy concerns the "psychodynamics of orality" This chapter seeks to define the fundamental characteristics of 'primary' orality and summarizes a series of descriptors (including but not limited to verbal aspects of culture) which might be used to index the relative orality or literacy of a given text or society.[88]

In advance of Ong's synthesis, John Miles Foley began a series of papers based on his own fieldwork on South Slavic oral genres, emphasizing the dynamics of performers and audiences.[89] Foley effectively consolidated oral tradition as an academic field when he compiled Oral-Formulaic Theory and Research in 1985. The bibliography gives a summary of the progress scholars made in evaluating the oral tradition up to that point, and includes a list of all relevant scholarly articles relating to the theory of Oral-Formulaic Composition. He also both established both the journal Oral Tradition and founded the Center for Studies in Oral Tradition (1986) at the University of Missouri. Foley developed Oral Theory beyond the somewhat mechanistic notions presented in earlier versions of Oral-Formulaic Theory, by extending Ong's interest in cultural features of oral societies beyond the verbal, by drawing attention to the agency of the bard and by describing how oral traditions bear meaning.

The bibliography would establish a clear underlying methodology which accounted for the findings of scholars working in the separate Linguistics fields (primarily Ancient Greek, Anglo-Saxon and Serbo-Croatian). Perhaps more importantly, it would stimulate conversation among these specialties, so that a network of independent but allied investigations and investigators could be established.[90]

Foley's key works include The Theory of Oral Composition (1988);[91] Immanent Art (1991); Traditional Oral Epic: The Odyssey, Beowulf and the Serbo-Croatian Return-Song (1993); The Singer of Tales in Performance (1995); Teaching Oral Traditions (1998); How to Read an Oral Poem (2002). His Pathways Project (2005–2012) draws parallels between the media dynamics of oral traditions and the Internet.

The theory of oral tradition would undergo elaboration and development as it grew in acceptance.[92] While the number of formulas documented for various traditions proliferated,[93] the concept of the formula remained lexically bound. However, numerous innovations appeared, such as the "formulaic system"[94][Note 5] with structural "substitution slots" for syntactic, morphological and narrative necessity (as well as for artistic invention).[95] Sophisticated models such as Foley's "word-type placement rules" followed.[96] Higher levels of formulaic composition were defined over the years, such as "ring composition",[97] "responsion"[98] and the "type-scene" (also called a "theme" or "typical scene"[99]). Examples include the "Beasts of Battle"[100] and the "Cliffs of Death".[101] Some of these characteristic patterns of narrative details, (like "the arming sequence;"[102] "the hero on the beach";[103] "the traveler recognizes his goal")[104] would show evidence of global distribution.[105]

At the same time, the fairly rigid division between oral and literate was replaced by recognition of transitional and compartmentalized texts and societies, including models of diglossia (Brian Stock[106] Franz Bäuml,[107] and Eric Havelock).[108] Perhaps most importantly, the terms and concepts of "orality" and "literacy" came to be replaced with the more useful and apt "traditionality" and "textuality".[109] Very large units would be defined (The Indo-European Return Song)[110] and areas outside of military epic would come under investigation: women's song,[111] riddles[109] and other genres.

The methodology of oral tradition now conditions a large variety of studies, not only in folklore, literature and literacy, but in philosophy,[112] communication theory,[113] Semiotics,[114] and including a very broad and continually expanding variety of languages and ethnic groups,[115][116][117][118][119] and perhaps most conspicuously in biblical studies,[120] in which Werner Kelber has been especially prominent.[121] The annual bibliography is indexed by 100 areas, most of which are ethnolinguistic divisions.[122]

Present developments explore the implications of the theory for rhetoric[123] and composition,[124] interpersonal communication,[125] cross-cultural communication,[126] postcolonial studies,[127] rural community development,[128] popular culture[129] and film studies[130] and many other areas. The most significant areas of theoretical development at present may be the construction of systematic hermeneutics[131][132][133] and aesthetics[134][135] specific to oral traditions.

• Bannister, Andrew G. "Retelling the Tale: A Computerised Oral-Formulaic Analysis of the Qur'an. Presented at the 2014 International Qur'an Studies Association Meeting in San Diego". academia.edu. Retrieved 20 May 2019.
• Dundes, Alan (2003). Fables of the Ancients?: Folklore in the Qur'an. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN 9780585466774. Retrieved 2 May 2019.
• Foley, John Miles. Oral Formulaic Theory and Research: An Introduction and Annotated Bibliography. NY: Garland, 1985
• Foley, John Miles. The Theory of Oral Composition. Bloomington: IUP, 1991
• Wong, Peter T. K. (2022). "The Soundscape of the Huainanzi 淮南子: Poetry, Performance, Philosophy, and Praxis in Early China". Early China. 45: 515–539. doi:10.1017/eac.2022.6. S2CID 250269080.