Oral literature in the context of "Oral culture"

Oral tradition, or oral lore, is a form of human communication in which knowledge, art, beliefs, ideas and culture are received, preserved, and transmitted orally from one generation to another. The transmission is through speech or song and may include folktales, ballads, chants, prose or poetry. The information is mentally recorded by oral repositories, sometimes termed "walking libraries", who are usually also performers. Oral tradition is a medium of communication for a society to transmit oral history, oral literature, oral law and other knowledge across generations without a writing system, or in parallel to a writing system. It is the most widespread medium of human communication. They often remain in use in the modern era throughout for cultural preservation.

Religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Catholicism, and Jainism have used oral tradition, in parallel to writing, to transmit their canonical scriptures, rituals, hymns and mythologies. African societies have broadly been labelled oral civilisations, contrasted with literate civilisations, due to their reverence for the oral word and widespread use of oral tradition.

Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, plays, and poems. It includes both print and digital writing. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include oral literature, much of which has been transcribed. Literature is a method of recording, preserving, and transmitting knowledge and entertainment. It can also have a social, psychological, spiritual, or political role.

Literary criticism is one of the oldest academic disciplines, and is concerned with the literary merit or intellectual significance of specific texts. The study of books and other texts as artifacts or traditions is instead encompassed by textual criticism or the history of the book. "Literature", as an art form, is sometimes used synonymously with literary fiction, fiction written with the goal of artistic merit, but can also include works in various non-fiction genres, such as biography, diaries, memoirs, letters, and essays. Within this broader definition, literature includes non-fictional books, articles, or other written information on a particular subject.

Ancient literature comprises religious and scientific documents, tales, poetry and plays, royal edicts and declarations, and other forms of writing that were recorded on a variety of media, including stone, clay tablets, papyri, palm leaves, and metal.

Before the spread of writing, oral literature did not always survive well, but some texts and fragments have persisted.

Avestan (/əˈvɛstən/ ə-VESS-tən) is the liturgical language of Zoroastrianism. It belongs to the Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family and was originally spoken during the Avestan period (c. 1500 – 400 BCE) by the Iranians living in eastern Greater Iran as evidenced from names in Avestan geography.

After Avestan became extinct, its religious texts were transmitted orally, then collected and put into writing during the Sasanian period (c. 400 – 500 CE). The extant material falls into two groups: Old Avestan (c. 1500 – 900 BCE) and Younger Avestan (c. 900 – 400 BCE). The immediate ancestor of Old Avestan was the Proto-Iranian language, a sister language to the Proto-Indo-Aryan language, with both having developed from the earlier Proto-Indo-Iranian language. As such, Old Avestan is quite close in both grammar and lexicon to Vedic Sanskrit, the oldest preserved Indo-Aryan language.

Germanic heroic legend (German: germanische Heldensage) is the heroic literary tradition of the Germanic-speaking peoples, most of which originates or is set in the Migration Period (4th-6th centuries AD). Stories from this time period, to which others were added later, were transmitted orally, traveled widely among the Germanic speaking peoples, and were known in many variants. These legends typically reworked historical events or personages in the manner of oral poetry, forming a heroic age. Heroes in these legends often display a heroic ethos emphasizing honor, glory, and loyalty above other concerns. Like Germanic mythology, heroic legend is a genre of Germanic folklore.

Heroic legends are attested in Anglo-Saxon England, medieval Scandinavia, and medieval Germany. Many take the form of Germanic heroic poetry (German: germanische Heldendichtung): shorter pieces are known as heroic lays, whereas longer pieces are called Germanic heroic epic (germanische Heldenepik). The early Middle Ages preserves only a small number of legends in writing, mostly from England, including the only surviving early medieval heroic epic in the vernacular, Beowulf. Probably the oldest surviving heroic poem is the Old High German Hildebrandslied (c. 800). There also survive numerous pictorial depictions from Viking Age Scandinavia and areas under Norse control in the British Isles. These often attest scenes known from later written versions of legends connected to the hero Sigurd. In the High and Late Middle Ages, heroic texts are written in great numbers in Scandinavia, particularly Iceland, and in southern Germany and Austria. Scandinavian legends are preserved both in the form of Eddic poetry and in prose sagas, particularly in the legendary sagas such as the Völsunga saga. German sources are made up of numerous heroic epics, of which the most famous is the Nibelungenlied (c. 1200).

Indian literature refers to the literature produced on the Indian subcontinent until 1947 and in the Republic of India thereafter. The Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India has 22 officially recognised languages. Sahitya Akademi, India's highest literary body, also has 24 recognised literary languages.

The earliest works of Indian literature were orally transmitted. Sanskrit literature begins with the oral literature of the Rig Veda, a collection of literature dating to the period 1500–1200 BCE. The Sanskrit epics Ramayana and Mahabharata were subsequently codified and appeared towards the end of the 2nd millennium BCE. Classical Sanskrit literature developed rapidly during the first few centuries of the first millennium BCE, as did the Pāli Canon and Tamil Sangam literature. Ancient Meitei appeared in the 1st century CE with sacred musical compositions like the Ougri, and heroic narratives like the Numit Kappa. In the medieval period, literature in Kannada and Telugu appeared in the 9th and 10th centuries, respectively. Later, literature in Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Assamese, Odia, and Maithili appeared. Thereafter literature in various dialects of Hindi, Persian and Urdu began to appear as well. In 1913, Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore became India's first Nobel laureate in literature.