「伝統」たち - Living, Loving, Thinking, Again

作者:文美士, 末木
発売日: 2020/01/23
メディア: 新書

末木文美士 *1『日本思想史』で、「大伝統」「中伝統」「小伝統」という用語が独自の意味を含んで用いられている（Eg. p.7ff.）。しかも、この本の中心的な概念。しかし、或る程度文化人類学や民俗学や宗教社会学を齧った人であれば、great tradition/little traditionというロバート・レッドフィールド*2以来の概念セットと混同してしまうのでは？　末木先生もレッドフィールドの名前が頭の中でちらちらしたりしなかったのかしら？
“Great and little traditions (Anthropology)”というテクスト*3から；

The issue of great and little traditions did not arise for the first generation of anthropologists who, following the example of Malinowski, mainly studied remote, self-contained, small-scale societies. It was only after World War II, when anthropologists began to study communities integrated within larger states and participating in centuries-old religious traditions such as Buddhism or Christianity, that the problem arose. The terms ‘great’ and ‘little’ traditions were actually introduced and elaborated in the 1950s by the University of Chicago anthropologist Robert Redfield. In Redfield’s vision: ‘The studies of the anthropologist are contextual; they relate some element of the great tradition — sacred topic, story-element, teacher, ceremony, or supernatural being — to the life of the ordinary people, in the context of daily life as the anthropologist sees it happen’ (1956).
An important early contribution to the study of great and little traditions came from Red-field’s protege McKim Marriott (1955) who contrasted Indian village religion with the San-skritic textual tradition of Hinduism. Marriott observed that fifteen of the nineteen village festivals celebrated in the village were sanctioned by at least one Sanskrit text. To explain the interaction between little and great traditions he theorized a two-way influence: local practices had been historically promoted into the Sanskrit canon in a process he labelled ‘universalization’, and ideas and practices already contained in this canon were locally adapted in a process of ‘par-ochialization’. Of course some rites may have been parochialized and then re-universalized in a circular fashion.

この後でルネ・デュモンらの批判が言及されるのだが*4、それは飛ばして、タンバイアの批判等についての言及をコピペしておく；

"Tambiah (1970) objected that a distinction between two traditions was an ahistorical artefact of anthropological enquiry because the great tradition for religions like Hinduism and Buddhism consists of a variable selection of texts written in widely different historical periods yet often presented as if they were a synchronic totality. This objection may apply in Asia, but not in the study of European Christianity where the principal sacred texts and ritual liturgies are very much agreed upon within each denomination (Stewart 1991). One cannot so easily accuse anthropologists of European Christianity of running amok in the library and inventing their own great tradition. In place of a distinction between great and little traditions, Tambiah proposed substituting a distinction between historical and contemporary religion with the primary task being to look for continuities and transformations between them.
Another promising line of approach may be borrowed from studies of orality and literacy. A focus on the differences between the written and the spoken word enables us to qualify and better specify the transformations which knowledge and practices undergo when they are translated into texts, or from texts back into oral and practical repertoires. Writing fixes a given text and facilitates the elaboration of consistent, often highly abstract, philosophical principles. It converts practical local religion into universal theology while also permitting the dissemination of these complicated ideas over broad areas. Literacy is one of the keys in creating a system of rules which can be used to keep a tradition orthodox partly through its power to define local traditions as heterodox or ‘superstitious’ (Goody 1986).

Nitisha “Indian Culture: Little Tradition and Great Tradition” http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/essay/indian-culture-little-tradition-and-great-tradition/47082
Puja Mondal “Traditions: Origin of Little and Great Traditions” http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/essay/traditions-origin-of-little-and-great-traditions/31943
Somenath Bhattacharjee, Joyshree Bora and Jushna Beypi “Interaction between great and little tradition: The dimension of Indian culture and civilization” International Journal of Research in Engineering, IT and Social Sciences 6-5, pp.1-7, 2016 http://indusedu.org/pdfs/IJREISS/IJREISS_774_66631.pdf

検索して上位で引っかかるのは、何故か印度関係のソースなのだけど、この概念セットが有効なのは印度に限った話ではない*5。聖典（正典）の伝統と、それとは乖離した信者の実践との緊張を孕んだ共存関係がある場合。例えば、カトリックの公式のドグマとフォーク・カトリシズム*6との関係など。さらには、マルクス主義というのを考えた場合にも、「大伝統」としてのマルクス主義といえば、マルクスやエンゲルスを初めとして、ルイ・アルチュセールや廣松渉といった人々のテクストが理解の対象となるが、「小伝統」の場合は新左翼活動家や共産党員の日常的な活動が理解の対象となるのでは？　また、大伝統、つまり聖典（正典）の視点から水子供養やペット供養なんて仏教じゃない！　と憤っても仕方ないことだろうし、『資本論』を持ち出して〇△派なんてマルクス主義じゃない！　と批判してもまた仕方ないことだ。

*3:http://what-when-how.com/social-and-cultural-anthropology/great-and-little-traditions-anthropology/ これは素性の怪しいソースなので、大学のレポートなどのネタ本にはしない方が吉。

*4:これはetic/emic問題或いはfolk term/technical term問題に関わる。

*5:そもそもレッドフィールドは墨西哥の非先住民社会の研究家。