Transcendental and Pragmatic Aspects of Religion 1

Indian villagers generally separate the transcendental functions of their religion from the more pragmatic functions, assigning different deities, rites, and practitioners to each. The two complexes of religious beliefs and practices are taken as complementary to each other. Some tribal groups in India make a similar, but less sharp, division, while Sinhalese villagers maintain a more rigid formal separation and still use the two in complementary fashion. Such separation of religious complexes is found in many other cultures. It serves to allay certain common dilemmas that people often encounter in their religions. Four categories involving different degrees of this separation may be discerned—undifferentiated, partly differentiated, more fully differentiated, and reform. The first appears in very simple societies, the second holds true in many tribal societies, the third has been characteristic of the major civilizations, while the fourth includes the widespread modern trend to do away with the pragmatic aspects of religion.