Ritual variations across independent reports indicate genuine oral transmission, not fabrication.

Evidence

Second, the degree of overlap between reports from such diverse sources makes it difficult to suspect a systematic fabrication. Minor variations do not impinge on the symbolic core. A certain imprecision and occasional failures of memory are of an order and kind which typically occur in the oral transmission of rituals between generations and neigh boring groups. Much anthropological evidence suggests that subjects remember only the quintessential symbolic aspects of a ritual (Barth 1987). — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 391

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘imprecision = authenticity’ inference parallels how genuine informal institutions show organic drift while invented ones show suspicious uniformity — a useful diagnostic for evaluating trust-system claims.