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From the various forms of oral tradition, human activities on the separation of certain
time and space, in addition to describing the social reality of the human’s response to
particular meanings also have relevance to aspects of human life. Between the human
activities of one person and another one, there is always a strong bond which describes
the meaning and value of human wholeness. Oral traditions make life and work of man the
centrum of the study of interesting thoughts and words. On the sidelines of the exposure
of the oral tradition, human action for a specific purpose is always visible, which in essence
has never been disassociated with the various dimensions of the activities in community
life. The same oral tradition is a form of human’s appreciation of (including craving and
desire) a ‘constellation of networks’ reality which is own by every virtuous human being as
the ‘image of cultured persona’ in social life manners.

Understanding Oral Traditions and Myths
We are taking a more in-depth look into the context of Melanesian Society, to get insights
from oral tradition. With regard to a particular study in the context of the island of Timor,
Schulte-Nordholt (1971, 1980)has successfully mapped out the findings of the sparks of
local wisdom which have long been inscribed on the walls of the historical society. There
have been obstructions in almost all places, the lack of human knowledge of the language,
would surely reduce understanding of the cultural wealth of society in its entirety. Thus,
the language is regarded as a very useful gateway for any researcher to go more deeply in
his or her search for the secrets of the image of cultured human beings locked in the strains
of local wisdom.
In the same context of Melanesia, Van Baal (1987) reflected on the constructive
relations between the myths, fairy tales, folktales, which, in my opinion, can be packaged
in the discourse of oral tradition. Myth, he states, is very important at all levels of human
life in their relation from one to another. Van Baal has come up with three strategies to
make sense of myths. First, a myth is an allegory composed by poets featuring a struggle
between the elements or symbols of varieties of talent and of human nature such as
reasoning, ignorance, love and others. Second, a myth is a story about kings with great
power and high wisdom, who lived in ancient times, and then deified by their posterity.
Third, a myth is the result of fraud created by priests and kings, to attain a position of
power for themselves so that they can control the masses (Van Baal, 1987).
Various studies of myth and mythology often underestimate the mindset of local people
about spiritual phenomenon. Therefore, van Baal has gone into detail to find the meaning

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