RITUAL [FIRST EDITION]. Although it would seem to be a simple matter to define ritual, few terms in the study of religion have been explained and applied in more confusing ways. For example, Edmund Leach, a contemporary cultural anthropologist, after noting the general disagreement among anthropological theorists, suggested that the term ritual should be applied to all "culturally defined sets of behavior," that is, to the symbolical dimension of human behavior as such, regardless of its explicit religious, social, or other content (Leach, 1968, p. 524). Thus one could presumably discuss the ritual significance of scientific experimental procedures, for example. For Leach, such behavior should be regarded as a form of social communication or a code of information and analyzed in terms of its "grammar." Ritual is treated as a cognitive category.

Only slightly less vast a definition, but one that covers a very different set...