Characteristics and communication between Little and Great Traditions (Answer in 150 words)

- Characteristics and communication between Little and Great Traditions (Answer in 150 words)
Introduction
Redfield's pair describes two levels within a single civilisation; Singer and Marriott showed that the interest lies in the traffic between them.

Body
1. The characteristics: the Great Tradition is reflective, textual and Sanskritic, cultivated in temples and schools by a literate few, and is pan-Indian. The Little Tradition is unreflective, oral and local — village deities, agricultural rites, folk epic — carried by the many without being examined.
2. The channels and agents: the sacred centre, mapped by Vidyarthi at Gaya with its sacred geography, performances and specialists; pilgrimage; priests, bards and mendicants; and the cultural performances Singer studied in Madras, now carried by print and television.
3. The two-way processes: Marriott's Kishan Garhi gave universalisation, in which a local deity or rite is carried upward and given textual sanction, and parochialisation, in which a Sanskritic festival is localised onto a village goddess. Srinivas's Sanskritisation is the same movement seen as status emulation.

Conclusion
The two are ends of a continuum kept in contact by specialists and centres, which makes Indian civilisation at once unified and locally various.