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Essays on rituals and religious traditions
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In essence, everything we do is a ritual. Rituals are tradition, a way of gathering people together to celebrate; to mourn; to live. They are also a way of conforming; religious rituals may make people feel better because the known is better than the ‘unknown’. From mundane things such as shopping to important ones like remembrance services for those who died in wars. It is my objective in this essay to try to explain in what ways that rituals affirm communities (if they do) and what role they take. To do this I will use three historical periods to outline my argument that rituals overall help to unite communities most of the time. Through the use of repetitive actions the community is positively bolstered by connecting with the pas, and potentially increases the level of belonging and attached one feels to a location.. The periods are: Renaissance Italy, Colonial India and Contemporary Western Europe. Using these three time periods as an overall starting point, rituals in communities shall come to light, and their importance and role shall be discovered. Ritual actions are different from ‘every day’ actions. A ritual is formalised, collective, institutionalised and kind of a repetitive action. Rituals function as rules of conduct which guide the behaviour of men and women in the presence of the sacred and can appear as the legitimation of secular authority, but there are also ‘rituals of rebellion’ which will be explained later. Ritual is a word derived from the word ‘Rite’ and refers to the liturgical practices of the church. The invention of an idea of ‘ritual’ as a distinct form of activity came from the Protestant reformation. The Protestants condemned this idea; they saw the word ritual as something to describe the disrepu...
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...ernard, ‘Representing authority in Victorian India’, in Hobsbawm, Eric and Terence Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983).
Haynes, Douglas E., ‘Imperial ritual in a local setting: the ceremonial order in Surat, 1890-1939, Modern Asian Studies, 24, 3 (July 1990), 493-527.
Hobsbawm, Eric J and Ranger, Terence. The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 2003).
Johnson David A., ‘A British Empire for the twentieth century: the inauguration of New Delhi, 1931’, Urban History, 35 (2008), pp. 462-84.
Muir, Edward, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton, 1981).
Nussdorfer, Laurie, ‘The Vacant See: ritual and protest in early modern Rome’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 18 (1987), 173-89.
Trevithick, Alan, ‘Some structural and sequential aspects of British imperial assemblages at Delhi, 1877-1911, Modern Asian Studies, 24:3 (1990), pp. 561-578.
The British considered Indian civilization to be inferior and implemented their western ways, overriding ancient Indian customs. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that British imperialism in India resulted in both positive as well as negative reforms in political, economic and social aspects of its new colony. To begin with, one can observe that the British colonizers did indeed improve Indian civilization by developing means of communication and transport. They built a great number of bridges, over 40,000 miles of railway and paving an astounding 70,000 miles of road (Doc. 4. The adage of the adage.
Canny, Nicholas: The Oxford History of the British Empire,vol I, TheOrigins of the Empire (New York 1998)
The article equips the reader with the tools needed to better understand other cultures, in terms of their own beliefs and rituals. Miner’s original approach does create a certain level of confusion that forces the reader to critically evaluate his purpose. “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” by Horace Miner ultimately brings people together, by illuminating the eccentricities present in all
Morey, William C. "Outlines of Roman History, Chapter 19." Forum Romanum. 1901. Web. 24 Apr. 2011. .
Livius, Titus. The Early History of Rome. Trans. Aubrey De Sélincourt. London: Penguin Group, 2002. N. pag. Print.
Favro, Diane G.. The urban image of Augustan Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. (266)
Marcel Le Glay, Jean-Louis Voisin, Yann Le Bohec. A History of Rome. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.
Scott, Foreman and Company, 1903. Kohne, Eckhart and Cornelia Ewigleben, eds., pp. 113-117. Gladiators and Caesars: The Power of Spectacle in Ancient Rome. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Meijer, Fik (Liz Waters, trans.).
Stewart Gordon is an expert historian who specializes in Asian history. He is a Senior Research Scholar at the Center for South Asian Studies at the University of Michigan and has authored three different books on Asia. Gordon’s When Asia Was The World uses the narratives of several different men to explore The Golden Age of medieval Asia. The fact that this book is based on the travels and experiences of the everyday lives of real people gives the reader a feeling of actually experiencing the history. Gordon’s work reveals to the reader that while the Europeans were trapped in the dark ages, Asia was prosperous, bursting with culture, and widely connected by trade. This book serves to teach readers about the varieties of cultures, social practices, and religions that sprang from and spread out from ancient Asia itself and shows just how far Asia was ahead of the rest of the world
Marshall, Peter. "British India and the 'Great Rebellion'." History. BBC, 17 Feb. 2011. Web. 24
2 Stein, Burton (2001), A History of India, New Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. xiv, 432,
The decision to grant independence to India was not the logical culmination of errors in policy, neither was it as a consequence of a mass revolution forcing the British out of India, but rather, the decision was undertaken voluntarily. Patrick French argues that: “The British left India because they lost control over crucial areas of the administration, and lacked the will and the financial or military ability to recover that control”.
Proverbs 22:6 states, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (King James Bible. 1973). When you train your children, you are passing doing rituals. Rituals that you learned from your parents and your parents learned from their parents. Some people think that they don’t have any family rituals. However, they do not realize that everyday task that you do with your family can be considered a ritual. Family rituals can consist of eating meals together, watching a favorite show each night, and all the birthdays and holidays that you celebrate with your family they can even help out with some behavior issues. In one particular video, the author talks about how family rituals can help build an
To understand the importance a sacred worship, beliefs rituals, customs, etc. we have to look at history and culture. It is impossible to engulf the history of religion in this paper, however I am purposeful to include similarities and differences in the way religion is practiced and lived. How religion and sacred rituals impact our world and culture today. To better understand the essentials of religion, I find it necessary to define religion by highlighting key rituals, practices, traditions, and beliefs of the Buddhist and Islamic faith in conjunction with my own.
With the advent of British in India, there was a huge migration from India to Britain for many reasons for e.g. for the purpose of service, labor, study etc. in his article Michael H Fischer has complements works of historians and commentators about the disparate roles and responses of various Bri...