ORAL TRADITION AS HISTORY, Jan Vansina, U. of Wisconsin Press, Madison,
1985.

Jan Vansina tells us that he has recast an earlier book on this topic.
He mentions the marvel of memory across the generations, its general
and universal nature, and his personal heavy reliance on African 
examples.

Chapter One, "Oral Tradition as Process" (pp. 3-32), notes the two
aspects of the product and the process of its transmission. He
considers eyewitness accounts (neither absolutely trustworthy nor
wholly unreliable) and hearsay (often fabricated or otherwise false).
He looks also at interpretation, at the selectivity and alteration of
memory, at explanations of place names, etc., not always reliable.

   Thus the quarter Kintambo in Kinshasa (Zaire) near the rapids means
   "fishery" as the people have it. But when they say that the next
   quarter Kalina preserves the name of a local headman, they err.
   Despite its apparent Bantu form, the name belongs to the
   Austro-Hungarian officer Kallina who drowned there in 1884. By 1957
   the name had been encrusted in some local genealogies of claimants
   for headmanship! p. 10

He considers art forms, including poetry with its characteristics, 
such as stock phrases and refinement even in oral composition. He 
looks at oral history, distinguished from oral tradition in that oral
history refers to what is within the current generation. He proceeds 
to oral tradition, including accounts (memorized and otherwise)
believed to be true and narratives assumed to contain fiction and more
freely told. He states that all societies have creation myths,
considers migration stories and mentions the threefold nature of
chronology and modern understanding of these:

   Some anthropologists have taken such stages to represent different
   functions in society. The first is myth and corresponds to a
   timeless past, the second is a repetitive (cyclical) middle period,
   and the third deals with linear time. Mythical accounts justify the
   bases of existing society and correspond to Malinowski's myth as
   social charter. The middle period justifies the working of present
   day society and is a static model of it. The recent period is the
   description of causal change, perceived as a disturbance of
   legitimate order. p. 23

Various oral societies have varying extents of time to these stages
and the border of the recent period flows forward with the flow of
time. He looks at genealogies, supportive of existing authorities, at
epic, fixed as to poetic form, and fairly flexible as to details of
content. And there are tales ever being retold and delighting listeners
by their new garb.

There is a look at the gathering of oral tradition as history. He 
mentions the Islamic hadith with the careful listing and assessment of
reliability of each individual linking the message transmitted. He 
states that besides describing events transmissions can convey trends
and attitudes.

Chapter Two, "Performance, Tradition and Text" )pp. 35-67), 
distinguishes ordinary historical textual criticism from an oral
performance which, if and when recorded, results in a text. He 
mentions the wide variety of performances, many with audience
participation in well known tales.

   Praise poetry in the great lakes area of Africa is shouted during
   martial dances by a warrior stepping out of the ranks to the front
   of the dancing area. The speed of delivery, the height of the 
   pitch, the martial attitude taken are part of his performance. 
   Praise poems for kings among the Zulu (South Africa) were delivered
   in front of the king by the poet during a public gathering in a
   different attitude. Historical accounts in Burundi were short 
   because they were told by a person in a circle sipping beer.
   Everyone contributed more or less in turn with proverbs, jokes, 
   small tales, or accounts. There was no time for a long performance
   here. To the contrary historical accounts (ibiteekerezo) in Rwanda
   could be quite long as the performer was the entertainer of a lord
   and his guests for a whole evening. He talked quietly, affected a 
   subdued voice, and acted in accord with a restrained dignified 
   atmosphere. He painted landscapes, persons, actions, and emotions
   all in words rather than in gesture or intonation. Historical
   accounts among the Kuba (Zaire) were given in front of men sitting
   in council who could not be easily interrupted. Indeed the king
   could never be interrupted. The telling was in the nature of a 
   testimony given in measured tones and careful language. p. 35

There is reference to the variety of performers, some of whom were a 
hereditary caste, some of whom were specialists in royal panegyrics or
genealogies or secret rituals, etc., and some of whom were not 
specialists. Then comes timing of performances (often only at night,
on occasions, such as coronations or at annual gatherings of chiefs,
even every sixty years). Next is the varying expectation of pleasing
innovation or exact reiteration and inducements (punishments and
rewards) to perform befittingly.

There is a look at the scope of human memory, at the process of 
remembering, at cues (a wide variety of physical objects, features of
landscape, including tombs, and music), and at instruction and 
learning. Then there's consideration of variation of material, for 
example, six performances of a Rwandan dynastic poem and versions of
Kuba clan slogans, as well as contrasting details in epics and 
historical accounts.

There comes mention of the issue of authenticity (for example, 
MacPherson's Ossianic poetry) and authorship. An example is cited of
approaching a performer's living source and accessing a much greater
repository of oral information. There follows the issue of 
faithfulness and accuracy of recordings (written or taped) of a
performance. This can vary from a stated reference to a very 
deliberate production of an official written history from oral
tradition, for example the Japanese KOJIKI.

   Scholars in our century, studying oral tradition and then 
   publishing their results, usually work systematically as well. They
   should publish or make otherwise available all versions they have
   recorded and relevant other materials including all their 
   fieldnotes. They rarely do. Authors should provide a clear account
   of how they proceeded and list what comes from different informants
   in the synthesis. This happens more often. It allows readers to 
   have an idea of what research design (if any) was used, which 
   motives performers had to collaborate, and eventually who 
   controlled the acquisition of data. p. 58
      
There are situations where material may be obtained from one side in a
dispute. There is also the matter of being able to record a normal
performance, as opposed to an unusual interview of a performer. 
Guidelines are provided for recorders of oral traditions: common sense
ideas of intruding as little as possible, building trust, more than 
one session, respecting local custom, avoiding challenging parties
concerning contradictory information, guarding confidentiality, etc.
One is reminded that the performance can contain interpretation by the
performer who may well know other opposing accounts to what is 
performed.

Chapter Three, "Getting the Message" (pp. 68-93), considers form and
content, the selection of words for reasons of the standards of 
versification, the episodes of a specific example concerning the origin 
of chieftaincy and the analysis of these episodes and their details.

   As a general rule of thumb one can say that the more artistic any
   narrative is, the less it probably reflects a succession of events
   or an accurate rendering of an historical situation. This rule is 
   not absolute. p. 78

Consideration of form and content continues with reference to genres,
each generally discernible by the existence of a word designating it.

   Genres are thus concepts that are culture bound. It is these
   literary categories that the authors of handbooks of historical
   method had in mind, when they suggest that historians must take
   literary categories into account, when analyzing the specifications
   to which messages must conform. The reason for this counsel is 
   obvious. The requirements of genre mold the expression of the 
   message. By knowing the genre well the historian will realize what
   is conventional in the expression and what is not, that is, on what
   he or she should put weight and what should be considered general
   embroidery. p. 81

The author rejects the validity of attempts to define cross cultural
African or human genres. He proceeds to examine the meaning of 
messages, often surpassing obvious literalism. Of course, language is
important. If the performance is in a language foreign to the 
performers, this is different from their ordinary thought of the
tradition. If the language of the performance is foreign to the
recorder, there is the issue of degree of comprehension. And, there 
are such key words as tabu and totem, so difficult to express in 
English that, in the case of these two examples, they entered the
language. He mentions Kongo nkisi and Luba buloji as other similar
terms. There is archaism. There are cliches and stock phrases. There 
is intent of what is communicated.

   When a Kuba tells about the trickster Tooml Lakwey he merely wants
   to amuse his audience. When we learn that in those days slaves 
   could trade on their own and could trade in blocks of redwood and
   thus accumulate enough capital to buy themselves free, this is 
   information that was incidental to the story. It was not intended 
   to be transmitted. This was common knowledge to all in the 
   nineteenth century and it simply has been carried over in the tale
   since then. Nevertheless, it was conveyed, and it is all the more
   precious for being unintentional. p. 91

Present intent accompanies historical information: support for the
current ruler, claims of land ownership, group identity, etc. The 
intent can be simply to have a good time, and any historical 
information thus conveyed valuable on account of the absence of 
partisan interest.

Chapter Four, "The Message is a Social Product" (pp. 94-123), notes 
the various social occasions of performances, from haphazard
recollections stirred by passing a particular place or naming an 
individual to dirges, marriage negotiations, court cases, formal
learning and initiation. There is esoteric knowledge. There is 
official tradition and more private accounts, often of shorter
chronological duration and less geographic extent. There is the 
weighting of elites in official accounts. There are uses of tradition
as tools supporting claims, as weapons in verbal contests and as 
instruments of social control. This social control can be fostered by
tradition as ideal.

   Distortions brought about by idealization were very common and
   sometimes striking. Some characters became the prototypes for 
   magicians, warriors, wisemen, and lawyers. Anecdotes that 
   originally belonged to other persons who were not so idealized were
   reattributed to the prototypical character. p. 106

Distortions favour the local elites, the royal court, the king. There
are the personal interests of performers, and these have been 
conditioned by the listeners, the society. There is reference to the
ambiguous nature of West African griots (bards), seen as a means to
fame and prestige, but also as parasites and as dangerous.

   In any particular performance a particular griot may pursue a
   particular goal which may be to win the favors of a new patron, to
   defend the family of his traditional patrons against attacks by
   others, or perhaps to receive a special favor of his patron.
   Obviously the performance will be influenced by it, but these 
   influences go in the general direction of the social uses and
   purposes of the genre of tradition in that society. pp. 109-110

There is mention of the issue of performers trusting a recorder, even 
of the various known categories of Europeans, such as officials,
missionaries, etc, the different responses to each and the 
understandable reaction to one who fits no such previous category.
There is a comparison of traditions in Burundi and Rwanda, beginning
with the terms for genres. These underline the difference in the two
societies, aristocratic Rwanda and more egalitarian Burundi. There is
reference to problems of geographical extension of local examples. And
there is time depth. This can be long or short.

   The Tio of Congo recognize only two generations backwards from an 
   adult Ego...I was told in 1963 that a certain migration occurred at
   the time of the grandfather of the chief whose title is Ngobila.
   Stanley, eighty years earlier, was told the same story which was
   dated to the grandfather of Ngobila. In the seventeenth century a
   written source already mentions the same tradition with the same
   time depth! pp. 117-118

Oral tradition may not recognize the introduction of significant 
change, for example, the introduction of the horse to the Assiniboine
Indians or the second European encountered by the Kuba who did not 
know he was taking over their country.

   ...it is interesting to find that the corpus of intentional
   historical accounts yields only a small number of topics. they may
   deal with origins, migrations, descent, wars (over land, women, 
   other wealth), natural catastrophies, and not much more. p. 120

Changing present conditions change traditions, though incompletely.

Chapter Five, "The Message Expresses Culture" (pp. 124-146), looks at
the significance of tradition in non-literate cultures, the basic
cultural concepts of space, for example, upstream and downstream for 
the Kuba, up towards the mountains and down towards the river for the
Rundi, of time, cyclical, linear, of historical truth, confirmed by 
the ancestors, historical causality and change, in oral socieities
often far more simple, individually centred and void of gradual
development than in mainstream Western thought. Next comes worldview,
commonly often unconsciously as aspect of awareness. One can seek to
discover another culture's worldview by learning its spirituality, its
origin traditions, its ritual. One ought ever be aware of the problems 
of interpretation.

   Studies of ritual and of practices where items are in relationship
   to each other as inclusive or exclusive of sets help us further, 
   but there are pitfalls in this research. For instance, one will
   observe that Kuba oracle boards display figures of a person, a dog,
   a warthog, or a crocodile. The person represents a nature spirit;
   the other animals are its domestic animals. They do not form a
   taxonomic set. The warthog is there because it is the spirit's dog,
   the dog because it can see in the unknown, which people cannot, the
   crocodile because it is the king of the water, and spirits are of 
   the water. The explanations are all different, but all these 
   animals obey nature spirits, except for the dog who merely "sees"
   (i.e., smells) what the nature spirit wants. p. 134

He proceeds to images understood within cultures, such as banana trees 
for fecundity and the roaring of bulls for the speech of kings. He 
next mentions cliches, at times a way of associating significant 
historical events with a mythological aura. Of course, cliches have
inspired quited different understandings by Western scholars studying 
them. The historian is less concerned with more literary perceptions
than he is with the intended implicit meaning. Jan Vansina provides 
guidelines to help in identification of such: comparison of 
stereotype, examining expressions of core images, studying conveyance
of symbolism to youth, awareness that stereotypes do not constantly
possess the same meaning, and may even contain deliberate distortion, 
etc.

Chapter Six, "Tradition as Information remembered" (pp. 147-185),
distinguishes the static constantly available written source from the 
pool of memories recreated on occasion. It looks at the collective 
nature of the pool and the varying levels of interest by different
individuals.

   These experts, the so-called encyclopedic informants or men of
   memory or oral historians know more than any other because they
   systematically have pursued historical information all across the
   pool, often out of sheer curiosity. Other experts know esoteric
   information. They are influenced by the generally known data, but
   keep part of their information out of general circulation. Among 
   the Lovedu (South Africa), paternity of the heirs to the throne is
   a secret. The throne was inherited by females through females only.
   The secret could not be violated on penalty of death. Clandestine
   genealogies of the descendents of queens and their genitors exist
   nevertheless. pp. 150-151

There proceeds a discussion of the flow of information, formally and
informally, with hunters tending to know more about local features, 
with knowledge of slave traditions tending not to flow up to nobles,
with the guarding of knowledge within a guild. There are stories that
flow across cultures, for example, some Biblical stories seem to have
entered local traditions in Zaire from possibly the sixteenth century.
He discusses the likely influence of oral accounts on each other. Oral
traditions can be used in conjunction with literary, archaeological, 
linguistic, etc. information, with the sources confirming each other.
He rejects structuring in the sense of the myth-making hypothesis 
concerning the untrained human mind, noting the opposites of Levi 
Strauss and devoting several pages to the topic.

   Is this due to the mystical property of the mind seeking its own
   discourse? Hardly. It results from the dynamics of memory, from the
   continuing activity of collective memory as new inputs occur, and 
   as material is remembered, transmitted, and remembered again. There
   is no single collective brain at work here, but there is a 
   collective memory and it is at work. p. 166

There is, of course, restructuring in the sense of transposing times,
joining events and individuals together, polishing stories into more
finished patterns, though irregularities do remain, making historians 
grateful. This leads to chronology, so very vital to the historian and
so very fluid in oral tradition. There are the regular natural and
social cycles; there are spectacular events, natural calamities. There
is age.

This leads to memory's use of sequence:

   Epochs are sequences imposed by memory. They are sets of traditions
   as they have been arranged in memory, even though often they look 
   as if they are based on measurements of time current in society.
   p. 176

This is natural as is the tendency to attribute significant 
developments to the ruler himself, instead of others living during his 
reign. There can be anachronisms, caused by the bestowal of antiquity
to add weight, the fitting in assumed sequencing, for example, the
believed route of a migration would suggest the geographical 
progression, regardless of variant indications from memory. A 
reluctance in oral societies to consider carefully the number of years
means genealogies and lists of events are perhaps useful only in a
relative way, not an absolute one. Lists include age grades and office
holders (which could have padding and/or names which have fallen out).

This brings us to genealogies:

   Genealogies are among the most complex sources in existence. As
   taxonomies they are used all over the world for speculating about
   origins. As social charters, they validate relationships between
   groups in many societies, both centralized and uncentralized. They
   are therefore manipulated whenever such relationships change. One 
   of the drawbacks of literacy for the Somali was that it became 
   harder to adjust genealogies to the realities of the day. p. 182

Cautions are expressed as to assuming average lengths of generations 
or reigns, and assuming synchronicity of lifespans and reigns of
individuals on the basis of their connections to a common third party

   One example makes the point. Queen Victoria of Great Britain
   (1837-1901) was a contemporary of Emperor William II of Germany
   (1888-1918) and Napoleon III of France (1852-1870), but the reigns
   of the two latter do not even overlap. A synchronism between the
   first date could confuse dates as far apart as 1837 and 1918. 
   p. 184.

Chapter Seven, "Oral Tradition Assessed" (pp. 186-201), begins by
examining the limitations of oral tradition. This may not agree with
archaeological or literary sources.

   Written sources also do not always obviously date or confirm oral
   traditions because the interests of the writers diverged so much
   from those of oral composers. A famous example is the past history
   of the kingdom of Benin (Nigeria). For several centuries prior to
   1880 there is no mention of a king by name in the body of written
   records, and the same events are not mentioned in the body of oral
   traditions and in the written records. p. 188

This does not necessarily invalidate oral tradition. There is 
selectivity of events and individuals worthy enough to be remembered.
There is the fluidity and fitting of the past to present perception. 
One can still reconstruct the past based on oral tradition, though the
demands are greater on the historian's interpretations, and on the
historian's refraining from interpreting, than in dealing with written
sources. He states that oral tradition can be viewed as an hypothesis
deserving of attentive consideration. One should not merely assume the
invalidity of such an hypothesis, preferring one's own hypothesis, but 
seek to ascertain why any other hypothesis merits superior acceptance 
to the one received from oral tradition.

   One cannot emphasize enough, however, that such sources are
   irreplaceable, not only because information would otherwise be 
   lost, but because they are sources "from the inside." In oral and
   part-oral societies, oral tradition gives intimate accounts of
   populations, or layers of populations, that are otherwise 
   apprehended only from outside points of view. Writings by 
   foreigners or by outsiders have their own biases. They select their
   own topics of interest, which they follow in attributing various
   activities and qualities to the populations they describe, and 
   their interpretations are shaped through their biases. p. 197

One point he makes is that oral tradition is also of great value for 
studying a society with written records, such as those of the West. 
The historian of such societies, once he looks past the current
generation, is an outsider who can benefit greatly from the inside 
view of oral tradition.

He concludes by underlining oral tradition's value, the intense labour
required, including ideally lengthy stay in the geographical area 
being studied and facility in the language, the often less reliable
product, though with hard work, awareness of the issues tradition
indicates for deeper study and multidisciplinary collaboration, 
reliability can be achieved, and finally the vast potential of this
still underutilized source.

This quite useful, thought provoking and informative consideration of
so central a topic to the methodology of historical studies is very
highly recommended.

Michael McKenny July 29-August 2, 2002

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