Hindu Religious Life: Puja ("Meeting God")-2

Special Situations

Temples and shrines are permanent structures, but for certain ceremonies an altar is constructed first, and then the deity or deities are invited to take up residence there for the duration fo the ritual.  Both of these were constructed for ceremonies connected with a sacred thread ceremony in 2003, using multicolored sand pigments on bricks (in the middle of the family living room).  The altar on the left with the star pattern was for a Navagraha ("nine planets") puja, with the picture on the top representing the ancestors.  The blue and white one on the right was for the sacred thread ceremony itself, on which the priests lit a sacred fire (the ladle used to put offerings into the first is visible at upper left).

Two more examples of temporary altars, both for a namakaran (child's "naming" ceremony) in 2020.  The left side shows the temporary altar set up on a carpet in the living room, the actual place where the deity is invited to reside was the round package  at bottom left (a coconut set on mango leaves over a container of water).   The pamphlet book at the bottom left (brown and yellow) holds the child's natal horoscope, which the priest (in red) determined from the time and place of birth, and wrote an extended commentary.  After two hours in the living room we moved to the courtyard for another hour in which the priest chanted and fed wood into the sacred fire (echoing the oldest Hindu religious practices, those of the Brahmanas). 

Both of these photos show rituals at a public place, Har-ki-Pairi ghat in Haridwar.  The diagram on the left side, carefully drawn with colored powders, had spots identified with all of the deities, who were invivted to reside there.  This altar was for a sacred thread ceremony, and the priest assured me that because the place itself was so powerful, the ceremony could be completed in one day.  The right hand photo shows one of the few examples of Hindu congregational worship, the collective chanting known as kirtan.  Kirtans are almost always sung in a call and response pattern, with the kirtan leader (here the yellow-clad figure in the center) singing a line of the song, and the rest of the people repeating it in response. 

Worship at pilgrimage sites.  The ritual on the left is a family ritual at Triyugi Narayan where and Parvati were married; the circular stone design supposedly marks the deities' exact wedding spot.   Note how the wives and children in the family groups are all touching their father's/husband's arm, and thus symbolically connected to the worship.  The right hand picture shows the Kedarnath deity procession, in which a movable image of the deity under the  canopy at back left is carried over three days from the deity's summer home high in the mountains (11,700 feet) to its winter home in Ukhimath (4300 feet).  The silver disc being carried in the right foreground is a decorative canopy that hangs over primary image at Kedarnath (the primary image is a natural rock formation, so it is not going anywhere).  

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