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The Great Tradition and the Little in the Perspective of Sinhalese Buddhism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Gananath Obeyesekere
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Extract

Our central assumption in the foregoing analysis is that cultures are integrated; therefore, the view that peasant cultures are compounded of empirically and conceptually separable great and little traditions is unfounded. We recognize the utility of the terms “great tradition” and “great community”; these abstractions are useful for describing the intellectual thought and interests of civilizations, and groups of individuals who promote and further these interests. The little tradition by contrast, we agree with Dumont and Pocock, is the whole culture of the little community or peasant society. Peasant cultures are “wholes”; but we agree with Redfield that they are not isolates. Peasant cultures or little traditions are linked with the great tradition through a common cultural idiom, which establishes channels of communication between the two traditions and sets up standards of mutual reference and influence. There are common sets of concepts and a common terminology. Though the substantive content of the terminology and the emphases given may be different in each tradition, there is a core of shared meanings associated with the terminology which facilitates movement between the two traditions. This is because the common idiom is derived historically from a great tradition, though refashioned to fit the peasant world view. The common idiom not only links the little tradition with the great, but also links the little traditions with one another. This represents an important aspect of the cultural unity of a civilization: a shared commonality of meanings which define the central values of the people and constitute their governing ethos.

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , February 1963 , pp. 139 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1963

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References

1 This is a revised version of a paper originally read at the Tenth Pacific Science Congress held in Honolulu, Hawaii, August 1961 in a seminar on the Sociology of Buddhism, organized by E. M. Mendelson of the London School of Oriental and African Studies. This article is based on data gathered in the field in Ceylon at various periods during 1958–61. I thank the Asia Foundation in Ceylon for generous financial assistance which made field work possible, and Mr. Louis Lazaroff, Asia Foundation representative in Ceylon, for much personal encouragement.

2 Redfield, Robert, Peasant Society and Culture (University of Chicago Press, 1956), p. 72.Google Scholar

3 Dumont, Louis and Pocock, D. F., Contributions to Indian Sociology, No. 1 (Paris: Mouton and Co., 1957), pp. 39–40.Google Scholar

4 Redfield, , p. 68.Google Scholar

5 Ryan, Bryce, Sinhalese Village (University of Miami Press, 1958), pp. 90, 106.Google Scholar

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9 Slater, R. L., Paradox and Nirvana, a Study of Religious Ultimates with Special Reference to Burmese Buddhism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), p. 13.Google Scholar

10 de Young, , p. 110.Google Scholar

11 This assumes of course that culture is in some sense “integrated” and amenable to systemic analysis.

12 See Srinivas, M. N., Religion and Society among the Coorgs of South India (Oxford University Press, 1952)Google Scholar, Chapter 7 for a sophisticated analysis of ritual on these lines.

13 See Wirz, Paul, Exorcism and the Art of Healing in Ceylon (Leiden, 1954), pp. 42–64Google Scholar, for a detailed description of this ceremony.

14 Hastings, James, ed., Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (New York: Scribner's, 1961)Google Scholar, article on theodicy.

15 loc. cit.

16 Weber, Max, “Social Psychology of the World Religions,” in From Max Weber, ed., Gerth, Hans and Mills, C. Wright (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), p. 271.Google Scholar

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18 This position is taken by Weber. Weber, Max, The Religion of India, trans., Gerth, Hans and Martindale, Don (Glencoe: Free Press, 1958)Google Scholar, Chapters 6 and 7.

19 Slater, , pp. 26–27.Google Scholar

20 We have for obvious reasons emphasized the idiom of salvation, though this is not the only channel of communication and mutual reference between the two traditions. It is often through this type of shared idiom that the great tradition influences the little and, it should be emphasized, by which the little tradition influences the great. This kind of cultural idiom pertains to other cultural forms like astrology, scholastic in the great tradition, ritualistic and magical in the little; or medicine, which is philosophical and empirical in the great tradition, but heavily magical in the little.

21 Slater, , pp. 112–115.Google Scholar