ORAL TRADITION OF SUNDANESE SOCIETY

Oral tradition is the manner in which information is passed from one generation to the next in the absence of writing or a recording medium (http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/homer/f/OralTradition.htm). This tradition mostly used in the rural community where the writing culture does not take place the major. It is possibly caused by the grade of their education that still low. It is also possibly because the people still hold on their ancestor tradition where the unwritten law has the different power that stronger than the written one.
In Sukabumi, exactly in my village Kararangge, one example of this tradition is “Pupujian”. It is a kind of song that be sung before we read the holy Qur’an together in the mosque or when we are waiting for the pray time. Usually people sing this in the evening around 5pm till the maghrib pray time comes. The lyric can’t be found in the written form. The old men tell it to children in the mosque. The message of this tradition is we have to remind one each other about the main pray for the muslim. That lyric is:
Eling-eling umat, muslimin muslimat, hayu urang berjamaah solat (magrib). Estu kawajiban urang keur di dunya, pibeukeuleun urang jaga di akherat Hirup di dunya teh kudu aribadah, sujud ka Allah, anu maha kawasa. sapoe sapeting anu lima waktu, duhur asar magrib isa sareng subuh. (Remember people, the muslim from men and women, let’s pray (maghrib) together. That is our duty in this world, for our stuff in the next world. We life in this world, we have to pray, prostrate To Allah, the most powerful. A whole day five times, dzuhur ashar maghrib isya and shubuh)
Another example is the story of my family ancestor and their ritual. In family gathering or in the rest time after praying isya, my parents told me about my grand parents, the parents of my grand parents, and so on. They told about some ritual my ancestor did and ask me to do the same ritual. They told me about the steps and its meaning. This kind of story can be found in the sundanese family which has the good religion teaching. As in my family, my ancestor is the religion leader in my village.