Oral Tradition And Its Role In History
Before paper recording technology had been invented, people had already created and shared myths. Historians gave those myths a name oral tradition. Some experts believed that oral tradition existed before 800 BCE, while others believed that it would be further back in time. Although it is impossible to confirm when did oral tradition begin, oral tradition does include and display a lot of useful information about the society in that period. Those valuable clues in the oral tradition could not only help historians to understand how the ancient civilization looked like, based on well-considered inference with more convincing pieces of evidence, but also offer some optional methods to make our society today become better. Considering the tremendous system of oral tradition, it is needed to break it into three parts, beginning, spreading and changing myths in oral tradition, and give deliberating and thorough analyzes individually. With an understanding of the birth of the combination of oral tradition and myths, experts could infer the background information of people, the public, the place and even the very first reason for its existence. Moreover, knowing how the oral tradition spreads, especially about who and what, researchers would be able to deduce the main function of myths in oral tradition. Oral tradition, however, did not keep the same as its origin all the time; in other words, the oral tradition changed for some reason whether it was on purpose or not. Those changes could be obstacles for historians, but it would show some interesting ideas if experts paid more attention to how it changed over time. Oral tradition is important for historian to analyze history.
An oral tradition is a form of human knowledge. Antropomitica, a writer, said on a website called steemit that “the oral tradition is an art of composition that has precise functions, particularly the preservation of ancestral knowledge through chants, prayers, incantations, discourses or stories”. It is popular in the old time to transport knowledge between generations. But it is not a part of the writing system. It can be counted as storytelling. Most of the transmission is completed by mouth between generations. Some of them are real. Those oral lores record the daily life of local people, including art, knowledge, culture and etc. The other part, however, is unreal. In those oral traditions, it contains the superstition and the myths. Even though more than half people believed that myths in oral tradition will mislead the study in history, it cannot hold the water. In fact, myths in oral lore provide a new perspective to learn the old society.
First of all, it is necessary to know more about oral tradition before combining with historical analysis. Everything should start with the beginning which is the origin of the oral tradition. The person who creates the first oral tradition is the breach of this issue. That person is too important to be ignored because he could give out the answer of how oral tradition started. Combined myths with the background of that person, researchers could give a more accurate conclusion about the old society of that period. Scholars, however, hold a different kind of opinions on this according to their own researches. Some researchers showed that oral tradition first appeared among the public as some formal used; while others believed that it used to person habit, later being accepted by society.
But no matter who is the first person to start it, the content of the oral tradition is undoubted. Famous author James Bonnet wrote in his book that “[oral tradition] began with a real or imagined incident or event that was worth repeating, something so intriguing that [people] were compelled to repeat it.” If it was valuable to be repeated, then it must be important. This is also a reason why the historian should analyze oral tradition.
Second, the information from the origin is further than enough. The developed function later is also an important part to understand the oral tradition. But, just like the smartphone, the functions of oral tradition cannot be summarized into one word or few sentences. Oral tradition was not only used to fill people’s metal demand but also could be the kind of a tool to reach some goals. Actually, the function of oral tradition is more complex. Usually, oral tradition worked differently between elite class and non-elite class people. And even the same function with the same result would have a different process.
Most people involved oral tradition in the old society are non-elite class people. Those people had a low educated level but heavy pressure on daily life. They had no chance to find a job in government or no ability to do long distance commerce. The only way to make a living was in agriculture. Agriculture always relates to the weather. But, non-elite class people did not know what causes the natural disaster according to poor education and experience, so they believed that there must be something which could control the weather. Comparing with something without a stable shape and hard to image, those farmers believed that the god, who looks like a human but has a superpower, is existed. They did pray to the god, and sometimes they luckily got what they want. Even though it might be a coincidence, it was a miracle for people at that time. The direct result is that those non-elite class people believe the existence of god. In order to get more to fill their physic needed and chase for a better life, they created more and more god and each god had his own duty and controlled different field, such as the god of harvest.
According to the book called Oral Tradition As History, there was an old oral tradition in China. Farmers would pray to the Earth God for a good harvest. Even though there was no record who was the first one pray to the god, it did not matter. Because of the miracle, someone succeeded once on praying for fertile land, and that farmer did get a good harvest. After that, whenever farmers had a problem with the poor harvest, they would pray to the Earth God. Whether it worked or not, it gave farmers hope. And there is no needed to be afraid that this would stop one day because whenever it did not work, farmer believed that less devoting is the reason rather than the god is not strong enough.
But elites used oral tradition differently. It is hard and meaningless to deny that some elites also believed oral tradition and the myths. It is not important because oral tradition also can be used as a political tool, especially for the king of the kingdom. God is a symbol of power. It is higher and stronger than a human being or all artifact, including laws. Criminals had the courage to challenge the legal because they can see the law and they know the punishment is acceptable. However, god is different. No one truly met with god, so that people do not know how strong the god will be. This kind of unknown will bring afraid into the deep of the soul in each person. A wise leader definitely would notice this point and take advantage of it. Since people would not be against will the god in oral tradition, the king in the old period would set up one or more gods to rule his people, such as the god of law.
In the book, Popular culture in ancient Rome, Justitia, Lady Justice, was created by Roman people. At first, there was no god of justice, and the number of criminals is increasing. Without the deterrence of the god, people have no concerns about the punishment from God. In order to change the situation, Lady Justice was created. It was based on several gods of Greece, Themis, and the other two gods. Thanks to Lady Justice, Roman once became the biggest country in the world since most people follow the laws.
Next step for researchers is to learn how oral tradition spread. No matter how the origin started or used, it was hard to believe and hard to prove that oral tradition magically appeared everywhere at that time. Even people who only got a high school degree knew that it is a joke rather than the fact. In some people’s viewpoint, they pointed out that the relationship between Silk Road and Buddhism is a proper example. In history, Buddhism was spread to the east place with those businessmen on the way of the Silk Road. Drawing inference about myths in oral tradition from the example of the Silk Road, a traveler could be the key role in spreading of oral tradition.
When a traveler passed hundreds or thousands of miles and came to a town or village, he would ask help from local people to resupply. As a traveler, he could not bring so many valuable good or currency, but those were needed if he would like to trade with local people. However, the traveler had something expensive, attractive and unique — his experience. He could share what he saw and the culture in some other place. He used his memory as a bargaining chip to get a supplement. And this process caused the spreading of oral tradition. Local people were interested in the shared myths because it was new to them. What’s more, a traveler could learn local myths and bring them to the next place.
Beatriz Mariscal de Rhett mentioned a man named Romancero in his paper The Structure and Changing Functions of Oral Traditions. Romancero was a troubadour. He added myths into his song and spread it around Spanish. After Romancero left south Spain, local people remembered his song. Every autumn during the harvest period of olive, people would sing the song for praying a good harvest season.
Traveler is a reliable way to spread oral tradition, but it is not stable. The total number of traveler is nothing when people comparing it with the number of people who stay in one place for the whole of their life. There is a way which is certainly stable to save and spread oral tradition. One keyword about oral tradition is the generation. Handed down from ancestors is an unignored process in spreading myths. The old generation is not the only people to teach other oral tradition, but also some special people. Shaman is a classic character to spread myths to as many people as possible, especially in a ceremony.
Author Duad once talked about a ceremony of the shaman in his article. People all believed that shaman owned the knowledge of supernature and superpower. From the oral tradition, susuk was something with magic. Shaman believed it could be used to enhance the ability of a person. For instance, if shaman used it on a person’s eye, that person would see anything clearly from an extremely far distance. And it could let one sing beautifully if shaman put susuk in that person’s tongue. This is just an oral tradition; however, it lasts for centuries. It did not support by science, but it was saved by the continued of shamanism. So far, shaman did do their job to protect and spread oral tradition.
Shaman is only a representative among the public to introduce oral tradition to all people. Another role besides the old generation and shaman would be the governor. For example, if King I created a god to rule his citizens and it worked well when King II took office, he would like to keep the old god. On one hand, it could make sure the stable of society because their god was still unchanged. On the other hands, it could help King II save effort and pay more attention to dealing with other problem. But the most important thing for a historian is that if the god is the same, the culture would not be changed significantly.
However, the oral tradition system is not as stable as the writing system. In other words, oral tradition was changed through history. Those changes always bring trouble to historians. Lacking a reliable recording system, people could only store oral tradition in their brains. But the brain is not the computer, it will make mistakes. When people heard the oral tradition from other’s mouths, they might mix some plots and misunderstand the whole myths. This usually cause uncountable damage to the spreading of oral tradition because the broken part is hard for the historian to figure out whether it was changed or not; even though historians found out which part was wrong, they had no way to repair it because the lost part was gone forever. And if historians did not notice the wrong part of oral tradition, they might come out a wrong conclusion. But anyway, it still left something for historians to analyze. For those part which was forgot by ancestors, it was lost in the river of history and sunk to the button of the lake without any change to be found. Although those changed our intention, it still influenced the quality of hidden historical information in oral tradition.
Some times changes do not mean bad things. Oppositely, changed on purpose is an attention mark for the historian. It would attract historian to pay more attention and spend more time on it. For folk, if the oral tradition changed usually means that something happened in the society. If citizens felt that their king did something benefits the society, they would use the face of their king to describe how the god looks like or created a god based on the story of their king. On the contrary, if the king let his citizens down, they would change the myths in another way. They would create a tyrant in the story and finally die from the punishment of the justice god or they would simply replace the name of a demon with the name of their king. Whatever they had done, it was a kind of letting out steam and a warning and challenging to their king.
People also changed the myths when their demands changed. When farmers were praying for more rain, they would give their god the ability to control the weather; when soldiers were on the battleground, they would believe that their god could bring them victory; when merchants were in the market, they told other their god could bring the chance to earn more money. The historian could utilize those changes to infer what happened in history.
Elite people also change the oral tradition. When a country defeated another country, the victory side would replace the loser, both the governor and the culture. On second thought, even the victory country did not destroy the culture of the enemy, they would make it be naturalized. Replacing god means the replacing of power, and it was a symbol of concur. Whenever this situation happened, the historian could make the analysis more quickly and save a lot of time.
Oral tradition is not cheating and valueless. It is not just as simple as storytelling. Myths have their own function and devotion. Oral tradition is an irreplaceable part of history. With deep and deeper analysis of it, the historian could find more hidden information and contribute to the study of history.
