Why is the raised cosine pulse for digital communications so popular?
There is no good reason, except that it's familiar and "good enough" for many applications. Many other better pulses have been proposed; see for instance "Nyquist filters in non-ISI transmission", by Ping-Kuen Lam, E.W. McCune and M.A. Soderstrand, DOI:10.1109/MWSCAS.1997.666198.