Religion as a ‘ body of belief and practices (Durkheim 1893) show a wide variation in religious ideas. The religious practices are also varied; these practices are nothing but the techniques to communicate with the super nature. But they are necessary for the believers who act in accordance with their beliefs. Such practices strengthen the social bonds in primitive group.
The practices can be classified into two sections:
- (1) Religious rites,
- (2) Rites-de-Passage.
(1) Religious rites – God is the central concept in religion. Religious rites aim to appease a God -by worship, which can be performed either privately in the home or publicly in the temple. The main objective is to influence the God’s action , Different sorts of fear direct the individuals to follow the path of reverence. Eg: i) The great Sun God, Singbonga among the Mundas is seldom worshipped, as he does not harm anyone , Since this God never gets displeased no question of appeasing comes. ii) Instances of human sacrifice are persisting among the Nagas of Assam and Khonds of Orissa. The forms of rites may be different as prayers, offerings, vow celebrations or sacrificial performances.
- Prayer is the simplest of all religious rites where reverence is shown by means of spoken words. It may be a request or just thanks. Sometimes the process is totally silent or memorized.
- Worship with offerings includes various types of goods and food items. Which are placed in front of the deity in an elaborate way.
- The vow is a promise of offering something special, to the deity at the fulfillment of certain personal wish.
- A sacrifice means the giving up of an object, such as food, drink, household goods, life of an animal etc. in the name of God.
(2) Rites-de-Passage – These special rites are significantly associated with the life cycle of the people, in each and every society , They mark the passing of one phase of life and the entry to another e.g. , birth, puberty, marriage, initiation to priesthood , death , etc.
Arnald Vn Gennep first brought this conception to attention , He also distinguished these rites into three types.
- Rites of separation
- Transition rites
- Rites of incorporation or aggregation
According to him , rites of separation often get prominence in funeral ceremonies , transition rites stand important in pregnancy , betrothal or initiation, and the rites of incorporation are widely visible in marriage ceremonies.
Puberty rites are frequently performed by tribal girls at the first signs of menstruation. Sometimes these rites solemnize in ceremonies through the worship of a deity. Eg: –
- i) Among the Uralis of – South India, a common tree house is built where all women of the village live during the period of menstruation.
- ii ) Among the Australian aborigines , an initiation rite is chalked out for boys, which is quite painstaking . A boy has to bear immense physical torture when he is frightened or scratched, His front teeth may even be knocked out. At the end, a ceremony is organized, after which the boyhood passes away The boy is recognized as a man and he is then allowed to marry
Mourning rites are universally found among the primitive groups although there are wide variation in performances. Eg:-
- The Badagas of Nilgiri hills dance around the corpse. Such funeral dances are also evident among the Duangs , Savaras , Kols and other tribes of Orissa .
- The Mishmis of N. E.F.A. utter prayers in a closed door room for days together; a feast is held thereafter in the honour of the dead person.
- The Gonds arrange a peculiar ceremony for bringing back the departed soul . The bereaved relatives go to the side of a river and call out the name of the dead person. After sometime, they catch a fish and bring that to home with a belief that the soul would be- reborn in the family.
The rites and ceremonies create an atmosphere of benevolence and fellowship. All motives for quarrel and disagreement get eliminated. Everywhere people have evolved religious systems in which religious behavior aims to secure an unity of mankind.
Rituals
Several features distinguish rituals from other kinds of behavior (Rappaport 1974, 1999). Rituals are formal—stylized, repetitive, and stereotyped. People perform them in special (sacred) places and at set times. Rituals include liturgical orders—sequences of words and actions invented prior to the current performance of the ritual in which they occur.
These features link rituals to plays, but there are important differences. Plays have audiences rather than participants. Actors merely portray something, but ritual performers—who make up congregations—are in earnest. Rituals convey information about the participants and their traditions. Repeated year after year, generation after generation, rituals translate enduring messages, values, and sentiments into action.
Rituals are social acts. Inevitably, some participants are more committed than others to the beliefs that lie behind the rites. However, just by taking part in a joint public act, the performers signal that they accept a common social and moral order, one that transcends their status as individuals.
Rights of Passage / Rights of Liminality
Magic and religion, as Malinowski noted, can reduce anxiety and allay fears. Ironically, beliefs and rituals also can create anxiety and a sense of insecurity and danger (Radcliffe-Brown 1962/1965). Anxiety may arise because a rite exists. Indeed, participation in a collective ritual may build up stress, whose common reduction, through the completion of the ritual, enhances the solidarity of the participants.
Rites of passage, such as the collective circumcision of teenagers, can be very stressful. The traditional vision quests of Native Americans, particularly the Plains Indians, illustrate rites of passage (customs associated with the transition from one place or stage of life to another), which are found throughout the world. Among the Plains Indians, to move from boyhood to manhood, a youth temporarily separated from his community. After a period of isolation in the wilderness, often featuring fasting and drug consumption, the young man would see a vision, which would become his guardian spirit. He would return then to his community as an adult.
Passage rites involve changes in social status, such as from boyhood to manhood and from nonmember to sorority sister. More generally, a rite of passage may mark any change in place, condition, social position, or age.
All rites of passage have three phases: separation, liminality, and incorporation.
In the first phase, people withdraw from the group and begin moving from one place or status to another. In the third phase, they reenter society, having completed the rite. Second , The liminal phase is the most interesting. It is the period between states, the limbo during which people have left one place or state but haven’t yet entered or joined the next (Turner 1967/1974).
Liminality always has certain characteristics. Liminal people occupy ambiguous social positions. They exist apart from ordinary distinctions and expectations, living in a time out of time. They are cut off from normal social contacts. A variety of contrasts may demarcate liminality from regular social life. For example, among the Ndembu of Zambia, a chief underwent a rite of passage before taking office. During the liminal period, his past and future positions in society were ignored, even reversed. He was subjected to a variety of insults, orders, and humiliations.
Passage rites often are collective. Several individuals—boys being circumcised, fraternity or sorority initiates, men at military boot camps, football players in summer training camps, women becoming nuns—pass through the rites together as a group.
Most notable is a social aspect of collective liminality called communitas (Turner 1967/1974), an intense community spirit, a feeling of great social solidarity, equality, and togetherness. People experiencing liminality together form a community of equals. The social distinctions that have existed before or will exist afterward are forgotten temporarily. Liminal people experience the same treatment and conditions and must act alike. Liminality may be marked ritually and symbolically by reversals of ordinary behavior. For example, sexual taboos may be intensified, or conversely, sexual excess may be encouraged. Liminal symbols mark entities and circumstances as extraordinary—outside and beyond ordinary social space and routine social events.
Liminality is basic to every passage rite. Furthermore, in certain societies, including our own, liminal symbols may be used to set off one (religious) group from another, and from society as a whole. Such “permanent liminal groups” (e.g., sects, brotherhoods, and cults) are found most characteristically in nation-states. Such liminal features as humility, poverty, equality, obedience, sexual abstinence, and silence may be required for all sect or cult members. Those who join such a group agree to its rules. As if they were undergoing a passage rite—but in this case a never-ending one—they may rid themselves of their previous possessions and cut themselves off from former social links, including those with family members. Identity as a group member is expected to transcend individuality. Cult members often wear uniform clothing. They may try to reduce distinctions based on age and gender by using a common hair style (shaved head, short hair, or long hair). With such cults, the individual, so important in American culture, is submerged in the collective. This is one reason Americans are so fearful and suspicious of “cults.”
Not all collective rites are rites of passage. Most societies observe occasions on which people come together to worship and, in doing so, affirm and reinforce their solidarity. Rituals such as the totemic ceremonies described below are rites of intensification: They demand collective adherence to the rules of ritual behavior and create emotions (the collective spiritual effervescence described by Durkheim 1912/2001) that enhance and intensify social solidarity.
Secular Rituals
In concluding this discussion of religion, we may recognize some problems with the definition of religion given at the beginning of this chapter.
- The first problem: If we define religion with reference to supernatural beings, powers, and forces, how do we classify ritual-like behaviors that occur in secular contexts? Some anthropologists believe there are both sacred and secular rituals. Secular rituals include formal, invariant, stereotyped, earnest, repetitive behavior and rites of passage that take place in nonreligious settings.
- A second problem: If the distinction between the supernatural and the natural is not consistently made in a society, how can we tell what is religion and what isn’t? The Betsileo of Madagascar, for example, view witches and dead ancestors as real people who play roles in ordinary life. However, their occult powers are not empirically demonstrable.
- A third problem: The behavior considered appropriate for religious occasions varies tremendously from culture to culture. One society may consider drunken frenzy the surest sign of faith, whereas another may inculcate quiet reverence. Who is to say which is “more religious”?