| Ritualism has,
first of all, an important social function. Religion, like language, comes to us in our
early years as a social product. It comes to us in the form of ritual with a meaning
behind, just as language comes to us in the form of sounds with a meaning behind. Ritual
is the embodiment of faith and it binds together large groups of believers. We can see the
proof of this every day in the large congregations of worshippers taking part in a common
ritual in a Hindu temple or a Catholic church or a Buddhist vihara or a Mohammedan mosque.
Ritualism has a historical function as well as a social function. It binds together not
only the different units of society during a generation, but also the different
generations of a race. It binds the present with the past and secures a visible
continuity for religion. Take, for instance, the
injunction that every pious Hindu once in his life should visit Banaras and bathe in the
holy Ganges and perform a Sraddha at Gaya and go to Ramesvaram to complete his pilgrimage
or the injunction that a pious Buddhist should once in his life visit the Holy
Land and see the four sacred spots where
Buddha was born, where he was illumined, where he taught his first sermon and where he
attained Nirvana.
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