How Rituals Work and How to Work on Rituals: ATribute to Ronald Grimes

The paper presents the broad contours of major directions in the study of religious ritual, particularly cultic ritual, with reference to the role played by Ronald Grimes in the study of ritual in the 20th–21st centuries.
In order to contextualize his work, and more generally the achievements of ritology as an academic field of inquiry on a broad historical canvas, it begins by identifying three major analytical frameworks within ancient emic analytical discourses on ritual:
relational, ergic, and syntactic.
Examples of these analytical frameworks are demonstrated from intricate scholastic ritual literatures in South Asian, Mesopotamian, and Mediterranean contexts (Śābara-bhāṣya on Jaimini-mīmāṃsā-sūtra; Sifra and Babylonian Talmud; Iamblichus).
Proceeding to early modern contexts, this paper examines the role that the study of ritual played in the “New Science” of religion, and finally positions ritology within adjacent contemporary academic discourses. Finally, inspired by Grimes, it sketches out future directions in ritual studies.