Any attempt to identify precisely the activity belonging to ritual in the Cirebonese context encounters semantic problems. There is no such word in the local language which precisely translates the English word “ritual”. In Cirebon, ritual activities, religious or otherwise, are singled out by their names; each name corresponds to the nature and purpose of the ritual concerned.

The lexical meaning of ritual is defined as “a prescribed form or method for the performance of a religious or solemn ceremony, or, any body of rites and ceremonies.”^[1] This basic meaning implies that, on the one hand, ritual activity differs from ordinary activity, by the presence or absence of a religious or a solemn character. Ritual activity, on the other hand, differs from technical activity by the presence or absence of a ceremonial character. Anthropologists, however, have different opinions about what constitutes ritual and thus what ritual really is. Some argue for narrow definitions, some others argue for broad ones. After showing the diversity of opinions and definitions set forth by anthropologists, Seymour-Smith proposes that perhaps it is ultimately unnecessary to define ritual, or to delimit it from ceremony on the one hand and from instrumental or practical action on the other.^[2] Seymour-Smith thus, takes a position much closer to Leach than to  Gluckman. Gluckman (1962) defines ceremony as any complex organisation of human activity which is not specifically technical or recreational but that involves the use of modes of behaviour which are expressive of social relationships. Ritual, on the other hand, according to Gluckman, is a more limited category of ceremony but symbolically more complex because, in ritual, deeper social and psychological concerns are involved. Moreover, ritual is characterised by its reference to a mystical or religious nature and purpose.^[3]

Leach, in contrast, asserts ritual to be any behaviour that “serves to express the individual's status as a social person in the structural system in which he [the person concerned] finds himself for the time being.”^[4] Following this same line of thinking Lessa and Vogt suggest that ritual may comprise all symbolic actions, profane or sacred, technical or aesthetic, simple or elaborate. It may range from the etiquette of daily greetings such as saying ‘How are you?’ to the solemn utterance of a magical spell or any form of dignified ceremony.^[5] Leach considers that the great majority of human actions fall into place on a continuous scale. He suggests that at one extreme actions are entirely profane, entirely functional, or purely technical and simple; at another extreme, actions are entirely sacred, strictly aesthetic, technically non functional and elaborate. He argues that most social actions fit between the two extremes, being partly of the one sphere, and partly of the other, and that the distinction among phenomena are therefore arbitrary and not always neatly classifiable.^[6] In contrast with some other scholars, Leach regards ritual not as a category of behaviour but as an aspect of behaviour. He writes: 

In other words, Leach maintains that any behaviour may have both ritual and non-ritual aspects. The degree to which a particular behaviour bears within it ritual and non-ritual aspects depends on the extent to which the individual concerned expresses in his action, both his status or symbolic value and his practical objectives and utilities. Leach therefore departs from conventional Durkheimian perspectives which categorise human actions in terms of the sacred-profane dichotomy, avoids putting rigidly religious rites in the sacred domain and technical acts in the profane, and disregards those who use the word ritual only to describe the social actions occurring in sacred situations.^[8]

For a different purpose and in a different manner I want to make use of Leach's perspectives to explain the ritual behaviour in the traditions of Islam in Cirebon.