The Oxford Dictionary of World
Religions (Edited by John Bowker) says that the
tradition has a meaning connected with religions.
“The tradition is the formal transmission of
information, (both verbal and non verbal) in religions.
In non-text religions, the process of tradition is all
the more vital since there is no independent repository
of information in written form, whether designated as
scripture or not, hence the foundational importance of
myth and ritual in all religions. In text-related
religions, scripture may (theoretically) precede
tradition, as in the case of the Vedas among Hindus or
of the Bible among Christians, but even their tradition
is instrumental in delivering the texts which become
recognised or designated as ‘scripture’. In Judaism,
tradition became the authoritative interpretation and
application of Torah, handed down, initially in oral
form, from teacher (rabbi) to pupil.
This tradition became of such importance that it was
designated ‘second Torah’. Torah she be ‘alpeh (“torah
transmitted by word of mouth”, -see Halakhah) More
widely, tradition in Judaism is referred to as masoret,
which in the Talmud includes custom, law, history, and
folklore. Tradition (see Hadith) is equally formal in
Islam, since Muhammad and his companions were the first
living commentators on Qur’an. In Christianity, the
status of tradition is more complex (and controversial),
since one part of the Church (the Roman Catholic) has
given to tradition (as the unfolding of scripture) a
defining role in some matters of salvation: that which
is at best dimly alluded to in scripture, or only to be
inferred (eg: purgatory the Assumption of the Blessed
Virgin Mary) can be defined by the pope ex cathedra:
such definitions are infallible and irreformable - i.e.
tradition has become equivalent to scripture. The
formality of transmission in other religions can be seen
in the importance of the sampradayas among Hindus, and
the succession lists and transmission procedures and
rituals among some Buddhists.”
The Culture is “A many layered concept, with at least
three dimensions; the cultivation of human natural
capacities, the intellectual and imaginative products of
such cultivation, and the whole way of life of a group
or a society. All three dimensions are present in
contemporary usage, but each also has a varied
development of its own. ‘Culture’ was used in Roman
times principally in the sense of tending the land (as
in the Eng. ‘agriculture’), a meaning extended by Cicero
who described philosophy as the training or cultivation
of the mind (cultura animi).”
Encyclopaedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology
(edited by Alan Barnard and Jonathan Spencer) thus
describes the ‘Culture’.
“The word ‘culture’ is probably the single most central
concept in twentieth-century anthropology. It has an
especially complex history, of which anthropological
usage is only one small part. Etymologically it is
linked to words like ‘cultivate’ and ‘cultivation’,
‘agriculture’ and ‘horticulture’. What these different
words have in common is the sense of a medium for
growth, a meaning quite transparent in modern biological
usage where a mould or bacterium may be grown in a
laboratory in an appropriate ‘culture’. In English in
the seventeenth century it became common to apply this
meaning metaphorically to human development, and in the
eighteenth century this metaphorical meaning developed
into a more general term (Williams 1983). In German
(where the word was spelt first ‘cultur’, and then ‘kultur’),
the term was used in works of speculative history from
the second half of the eighteenth century and,
crucially, started to be used in the plural in the sense
of humanity being divided into a number of separate,
distinct cultures.
Sense of culture
What emerged from this history in the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries was a complex of overlapping,
but potentially different meanings. On the one hand,
there is what has become known as the ‘humanistic’ sense
of culture, which is singular and evaluative: culture is
what a person aught to acquire in order to become fully
worthwhile moral agent. Some people have more culture
than others - they are more cultured - and some human
products are more cultural than others - the visual
arts, music and literature. Then there is what has
become known as the ‘anthropological’ sense, which is
plural and relativistic. The world is divided into
different cultures, each worthwhile in its way. Any
particular person is a product of the particular culture
in which he or she has lived, and differences between
human beings are to be explained (but not judged) by
differences in their culture (rather than their race).”
“Much ink has been expended-especially in American
anthropology in the 1940s and 1950s - on a supposedly
‘true’ or ‘correct’ definition of culture, one which
would isolate and clarify just what is we study as
anthropologists, while marking off ‘our’ word and its
meaning from other, non-anthropological usage. In this
article, we will not attempt any such definition. What
makes a word like culture to so important for
anthropologists is precisely the arguments it generates
about disciplinary identity; what makes those arguments
important is the way in which the concerns of the
non-anthropological world keep leaking into our own
private disciplinary disputes, despite all our best
attempts to establish boundaries around what we see as
our intellectual property. Instead of a definition, we
offer an ethnographic history in three phases; the
prehistory of the pluralistic concept of culture from
its roots in German Romantics like Herder to its
anthropological working out in the writings of Franz
Boas; the competing definitions of mid-century American
anthropology, in the context of European suspicion of
the term; and the rise and demise of one particular
version-culture-as-symbols-and -meanings in the second
half of the twentieth century.”
These scholarly descriptions give us an idea that both
tradition and culture have similar features. In both it
denotes activities came down the age. Culture has
certain religious ideas or feelings behind, but in
connection with tradition, it is not necessary. There
are religious and cultural traditions also.
When we think about Buddhist tradition it is very
necessary to note that there are two traditions, namely
Mahayana and Theravada. Between the first century B.C.
and the first century A.D., the two terms Mahayana and
Hinayana appeared in the Saddhamma Pundarika Sutra or
the Sutra of the Lotus of the Good Law. About 2nd
century A.D., Mahayana became clearly defined.
Nagarjuna in his work Madhyamika-karika, described
philosophy of sunyata to prove that “everything is void”
Asanga and Vasubandhu, in about 4th century wrote many
books about Mahayana. Any way after the 1st century
A.D., the Mahayanists took a definite stand and then
only came the terms Mahayana and Hinayana into
existence.
In this way we must not confuse Hinayana with Theravada.
According to the Oxford Dictionary of World Religions,
the word Mahayana gives the meaning of ‘great vehicle’
and the word Hinayana gives the meaning of ‘inferior
vehicle’. Some scholars are of opinion that Hinayanists
and Theravadins expect to become Arahant though
Mahayanists expect to become Buddha while they attain
Nibbana. Ven. Prof. W. Rahula denies that categorically.
(See, Gems of Buddhist Wisdom, p. 461) The terms
Hinayana and Mahayana are not mentioned in the Theravada
Pali Literature. In 1950 the World Fellowship of
Buddhists inaugurated in Colombo, unanimously decided
that the term Hinayana should be dropped when referring
to Buddhism existing today in Sri Lanka, Thailand,
Burma, Cambodia, Laos, etc.
Since the meaning of the word ‘tradition’ is wide, we
cannot touch each and every fact here. But, we will try
to discuss some of them.
අමාවක
පුර අටවක
පසෙලාස්වක
අව
අටවක