ABSTRACT
Translate “rituals” into the neutral “ceremonies” or the even more neutral “public acts” or social interacts, and the statement becomes almost a tautology. The function of “ritual” can be better elucidated under changing rather than static conditions. S. J. Tambiah has tried to get round this difficulty in his recent discussion of the “form and meaning of magical acts”. He argues that: “while both ‘magic’ and ‘science’ are characterised by analogical thought and action, they comprise differentiated varieties whose validity it would be inappropriate to measure and verify by the same standards. One may argue that diversity of meaning, as with three and four constitutes a set of variations on a common theme, reflecting, expressing, deriving from one common structure.
