Revision summary
Pre-modern religion served explanation, solidarity, kinship, and kingship. Tylor and Frazer: intellectualist accounts of soul and magic. Durkheim: group ritual; variety follows social morphology. Weber: theodicy and meaning. Marx: tribute and protest in religious form. Redfield: layered little and great traditions.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
Pre-modern societies housed many beliefs and practices because religion did several jobs at once: explanation, solidarity, kingship, and seasonal work. Variety followed from ecology, kinship, and political form, not from a single superstition.
Body
Intellectual and existential reasons
- E. B. Tylor’s animism and James Frazer’s magic-religion-science sequence offered early intellectualist reasons: to explain dream, death, and crop.
- Max Weber stressed theodicy: suffering needs a meaningful cosmos.
Social reasons
- Emile Durkheim: ritual produces the sacred as the group’s ideal. Clans, tribes, and castes therefore differ as groups differ.
- Ancestor cults follow descent. Irawati Karve’s kinship types predict different funeral and marriage rites.
Political and economic reasons
- Kingship and priesthood dualise power. Karl Marx read much practice as a veil of tribute, yet peasants also protested in religious idiom.
- Agricultural calendars need festivals. Pastoral and forest groups need other spirits.
Why various, not one
- Diffusion, conquest, and little-and-great traditions, after Robert Redfield, mix layers.
- Pre-modern is not simple. Empires already had plural cults.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD NEED[Explain bind rule work] --> REL[Beliefs practices] GRP[Many groups ecologies] --> VAR[Variety] REL[REL] --> VAR[VAR]
Conclusion
Various pre-modern beliefs and practices arose to explain misfortune, bind groups, organise kinship, and legitimate rule and work. Tylor, Durkheim, and Weber name intellectual, social, and meaning reasons. Variety tracks many groups and ecologies, not a single primitive mind.
Quick related
Students also ask
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What is sects? Discuss their role in multi-religious societies with empirical examples.
Next question on this syllabus topic (2018 · Q8(b)). View answer →
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Were pre-modern people only fearful?
Fear is one motive. Solidarity, beauty, and politics are others.
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Did one tribe have one religion?
Often a dominant cult plus household and specialist practices. Variety existed inside as well as between.
Same topic · past papers
UPSC has asked this before
These previous-year questions sit on the same topic. Open one to practise the earlier ask.
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2017 · Q8(c) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Elaborate on various types of religious practices prevalent in India society -
2025 · Q4(a) · Sociology GS 1 · 20 marks
Give an account of the recent trends of marriage in the Indian context. How are these different from traditional practices? -
2023 · Q5(d) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Analyze critically David Morgan's views on family practices
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