RESEARCH ARTICLE Ritual exegesis among Mauritian Hindus Dimitris Xygalatas a,b and Peter Maňo c,d a Department of Anthropology, University of Connecticut, 354 Mansfield Road Unit 1176 Storrs, CT, USA; b Department of Psychological Sciences, Center for the Ecological Study of Perception & Action, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA; c Slovak Academy of Sciences, Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology, Bratislava, Slovakia; d LEVYNA Laboratory for the Experimental Research of Religion, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic ABSTRACT Practitioners reflections on the purpose and meaning of ritual actions are often assumed to be limited, absent, or irrelevant. As a result, many anthropological analyses overlook or brush away native explanations. While it is true that ritual exegesis can often be scarce, the current paper rather focuses on some of the conditions that favor its presence and on exploring the diversity in its forms across different types of rituals. Specifically, we used cultural domain analysis to examine cultural models of exegesis for six rituals practiced by Mauritian Hindus. We show that ritual structure affects exegetical reflection, such that costlier rituals tend to elicit a greater volume and thematic range of exegesis. Moreover, different types of rituals are associated with different functions, with costlier rituals being linked to more pressing concerns. We discuss the relevance of our data for the Mauritian context, as well as for broader anthropological theories of ritual. KEYWORDS Ritual; exegesis; Mauritius; Hinduism; religion Introduction Ethnographers who ask people about their ritual practices are typically faced with a paradox: while informants agree that their rituals are deeply meaningful and indispensa- ble, they are often unable to explain what their meaning is or why they are so important, other than that they form part of tradition (Xygalatas 2022). One of the most common answers to the question ‘why is this ritual done’ is some version of ‘it’s just what we do’ or ‘we’ve always done it this way’. When pressed, informants might eventually come up with a variety of explanations, but the variability in those answers has led some scholars to suspect that they are made up on the hoof so that the curious ethnogra- pher will finally be satisfied (Hinde 2005). As a result, a wide range of analyses, ranging from symbolic to functionalist, have been less interested in seriously engaging with native explanations than they have been in imposing their own. Rather than ignoring or brushing aside emic explanations of ritual practices (Astuti 2017), the current study examines the degree to which such explanations are culturally shared, with the aim of detecting common core aspects as well as patterns of variation in exegetical reflection on ritual. Additionally, this approach allows us to test anthropo- logical hypotheses about structural features of ritual that might constrain such variation. © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group CONTACT Dimitris Xygalatas xygalatas@uconn.edu RELIGION https://doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2022.2042418