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Rituals and Healing: The Case of.... : 59
In some academic aren's use of rituals has been seen as "nonscientific” medical systems being remnant of primitive or peasant, old- country traditions, or as characteristic of uneducated, lower class persons.' Yet processes of healing through rituals are not just related with individual sense of relief or personal empowerment from external or internal sources. There is growing evidence in the medical and social psychological literature that illness and diseases are closely linked with issues of power and domination.? So one can argue that use of rituals for the astronomical, health, psychological or symbolic healing was catered as an essential process of the making of hierarchical socio-economic structures in the pre- modern societies. In case of Jainism construction of a particular belief system through extensive and varied use of symbolism represented many different meanings in the religious cosmology of community3. Religious community of Jains in medieval north India used a well led tradition of rituals in the processes of healing to strengthen its community bonds and a course of redefining everyday forms of religious processes. So this paper argues for a materialistic historical explanation of the use of rituals in the processes of healing. Before citing examples one requires to discuss ritual as a theoretical concept defining the religious and social processes in the historical context of their formation. Each religion has two forms of practices; one is of spiritual philosophy which evolves the religious thought. But the spiritual philosophy of the religion cannot last unless it has support of a particular code of conduct in form of the rituals. Rituals, or, better, actions that have become ritualized, stand in a dual relationship to actors: as a product of the actors' own agency and intentions, and as prefabricated acts that stand outside the philosophical core of the religious discourse. Thus rituals are the material forms of the philosophy of the religion to lead people on a journey from their 'outer' to the 'inner of the self. Both the philosophy and rituals have to be in terms of the empirical reality. The South Asian indigenous understandings of disease as forms of possession or affliction have come to gain visibility in and around discussions of social and religious matters as well as the constitution
