LITTLE AND GREAT TRADITIONS

The concepts of little and great traditions also stand for change in 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 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.

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 follow 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.

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