PUJA AND HINDU OFFERINGS | Facts and Details

HINDU OFFERINGS

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Guruji puja Offerings ( “prasad” ) placed in front of images or symbols of deities include flowers, flower petals, coconut, sweetmeats, morsels of food, colored powder, uncooked rice, fruit, milk, yogurt, ghee, fire water, and bells. Many people light oil lamps, incense or small pools of camphor oil on stone slabs. Sometimes the offerings are made to the sound of chants or beating drums, ringing bells, and blowing horns.

Some offerings are quite elaborate. Floating offerings made of jasmine flowers and candles are set up to light the way for religious rituals. Offerings to the Ganges consist of tiny boats made from maljhana leaves fastened together with twigs, with marigolds, rose petals and camphor inside. The camphor is lit before the offering is set afloat on the holy river. Worshipers sometimes dip their fingers in lamps lit by bell-clanging priests and press their warm fingers to their forehead.

Offerings generally symbolize one of the five element of existence: earth, water, fire, wind and ether. They are usually made to specific gods, often on a daily basis, and are seen as a kind bloodless sacrifice, or a symbol of sacrifices that were once at the heart of the Hindu relationship.

Many Hindus begin their day at home by making an offering on their family altar. Offerings are often the central acts of devotion performed at temples, ceremonies and festivals They are often performed as much out of self or family interest — for help passing an examination, the birth a boy, success in business or good health for a sick loved one — as an act of devotion to a god.

Offerings imply subordination and may include receiving back part of the items offered — after their spiritual essence has been taken. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says a flower, fruit, a leaf or handful of water offered to God will be accepted as an act of devotion. At temples cows often eat left behind as offerings.

Websites and Resources on Hinduism: Hinduism Today hinduismtoday.com ; India Divine indiadivine.org ; Wikipedia article Wikipedia ; Oxford center of Hindu Studies ochs.org.uk ; Hindu Website hinduwebsite.com/hinduindex ; Hindu Gallery hindugallery.com ; Encyclopædia Britannica Online article britannica.com ; International Encyclopedia of Philosophy iep.utm.edu/hindu ; The Hindu Religion, Swami Vivekananda (1894), .wikisource.org ; Journal of Hindu Studies, Oxford University Press academic.oup.com/jhs

Puja

“Pujas” (meritorious actions) refers to all forms of Hindu worship: prayers, prayer rituals, and offerings. They can be simple acts by worshipers at a temple or elaborate rituals performed with the help of Brahmin priests to mark special life cycle event. They usually involve chanting, bowing and leaving offerings before images.

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Puja with leavesPuja of the gods consists of a range of ritual offerings and prayers typically performed either daily or on special days before an image of the deity, which may be in the form of a person or a symbol of the sacred presence. In its more developed forms, puja consists of a series of ritual stages beginning with personal purification and invocation of the god, followed by offerings of flowers, food, or other objects such as clothing, accompanied by fervent prayers.

A puja usually involves some kind of offering and worship before an image. It is supposed to begin with a mantra that calls the deity and ends with the worshiper smearing blood-red vermillion paste or red powder ( “kumkum”) on the middle of the forehead of the image being worshiped. Lighting incense sticks and ringing brass bells, like matras, are seen as ways to get the attention of the gods.

According to the Pew Research Center: Most Hindus in India perform puja at home daily (55 percent). Fewer Hindus perform puja at temples daily (20 percent). Hindu women are much more likely than men to perform puja in their home daily (64 percent vs. 47 percent), but there is no gender gap when it comes to performing puja at temples (20 percent vs. 21 percent). [Source: Jonathan Evans, Pew Research Center, October 26, 2022]

Why Puja Is Performed

Many people don't understand the significance of puja, whether conducted daily at home or at a temple. It can be performed on images of the elephant-headed God, Lord Ganesha, or the monkey-God, Hanuman, or on stones. Since God is omnipresent he should be present in stones, animals and statues. Hindus believe that one commits a grave error by seeing an essential distinction between an idol and the Supreme Lord, for they are one and the same. Pujas are usually directed to a specific deity. They often are made in conjunction with a request for protection and help or an expression of thanks. Their ultimate objective is to become one with the deity to which the prayer is directed.

A puja is supposed to bring five things together: 1) a pot containing water, representing the body; 2) “murtis” (an image of deity); 3) “prasad” (a flower or fruit offering, representing nature); 4) “yantras” (a mandala, or sacred pattern representing the universe); and 5) a “mantra”, or chant. The first four are optional. The last one is necessary. The mantra is viewed as essential to complete the ritual.

There is often an element of give and take with puja. Sometimes an offering is made and a small portion is taken back. This portion is regarded as blessed and auspicious. In Hindu temples “puja” often takes the form of offerings at statues of gods followed by blessings, sometimes a mark on the forehead, by a priest. Most people give the priest a small amount of money after receiving the blessing. A Web site launched in the early 2000s (saranam.com) arranges pujas at a choice of temples in Indian by proxy for a fee of $10 to $75 per prayer, with the cost determined by how elaborate the puja is.

Practicing Puja on a Hindu Image

Durga puja

Puja can conducted on an image of a god made of gold, silver, bronze or even clay. Before the puja, one bathes to signify the outer purification. Mantras and stotras are recited for inner purification. Even a very simple puja employs flowers. The smell of flowers smell is called vaasaana. Vaasaana is also an another name for the imprints in the jiva, which constitute the flavor/smell of our personality, habits etc. Flowers are picked up with the right hand and then, the fingers are pointed downward so that the flowers fall at the feet of the idol. The five fingers signify the five senses. The senses which are normally directed outward for pleasure are pointed downward to show that they are surrendered at the feet of the image. Usually, the flower is placed after uttering 'namaH.' While namaH means salutation, it is also a corrupt form of 'na mama' i.e not mine. Thus, when offering flowers, one says, 'I am offering to you my senses, attributes, character but none of them are really mine. Everything is yours.'

The dedication of the body of the worshipper to the deity is a necessary prelude to ceremonial worship. In this rite the worshipper purifies and consecrates each part of his person that he may become fit to appear before a god. 'No man should worship a deity so long as he himself has not become a deity. If the repetition of sacred utterances is performed without previous dedication of the parts of the body to the different deities, this repetition of mantras is demoniacal and without useful effect. To worship a deity, a man must become the Self of that deity through dedication, breath control, and concentration until his body becomes the deity's abode.' (Gandharva Tantra.) [Source: Translation by Alain Danialou, in his Hindu Polytheism (New York: Bollingen Series LXXIII, 1964), PP. 377-9, Eliade Page website ^*^]

1) The first step is the purification of the worshipper and of the accessories of worship. 'The purification of the person of the worshipper consists in bathing, The purification-of-the-subtle-elements (bhuta shuddhi) of the body is done through breath control and through the dedication of the six main parts of the body to the six deities to which they correspond. After this the other forms of dedication are performed. 2) 'The purification of the place of worship is done by cleaning it carefully, adorning it with an auspicious ornamentation made of powders of five colours, placing a seat and a canopy, using incense, lights, flowers, garlands, etc. All this must be done by the worshipper himself. ^*^

3) 'Purification of the ritual utterances, the mantras, is done by repeating the syllables which compose them in the regular order and then in the reverse order. 4) 'Purification of the accessories is done by sprinkling water consecrated with the basic mantra and the weapon-mantra (astra-mantra, i.e., the sound phat) and then displaying the cow-gesture (dhenumudra). 5) 'Purification of the deity is done by placing the image on an altar invoking the presence of the deity through its secret mantra and the life-giving breathing-mantra (prana-mantra), bathing the image three times while reciting the basic mantra, then adorning it with garments and jewels. After this an offering of incense and light should be made.' (Kularnava Tantra.) ^*^

Removing Obstacles: “'The worshipper should bow with respect to the deities of the doors, first at the eastern door of the house of worship, then, successively at the southern door, the western door, and the northern door. After this he should bow to his chosen deity present in the form of its yantra.' (Nigama-kalpalata 14.) If the sanctuary has only one door, the worship of the deities of the three other directions should be done mentally. 'The sacrificial house should be entered with the right foot' (Shivarcana Candrika), with the left foot ff it is a left-hand sacrifice. 'The worshipper should remove obstacles of celestial origin by the godly look (looking with wide-open, unblinking eyes). Obstacles of the intermediary world are removed with the help of water consecrated with the astra-mantra. Terrestrial obstacles are avoided by doing three taps with the heel of the right foot.' (Shambavi Tantra.) ^*^

Puja Sanwaliaji

Chanting, Meditating and Praising the Deity During Puja

'Just as gold is freed from its dross only by fire and acquires its shining appearance from heat, so the mind of a living being, cleansed from the filth of his actions and his desires through his love for me, is transformed into my transcendent likeness. The mind is purified through the hearing and uttering of sacred hymns in my praise., (Bhagavata Puruna II, 14, 25.) The glorification of a deity is something different from meaningless praise. The Brhad-devata (1, 6) says: 'The praise of something consists in the utterance of its name, the description of its shape, the proclaiming of its deeds, the mention of its family.' [Source: Translation by Alain Danialou, in his Hindu Polytheism (New York: Bollingen Series LXXIII, 1964), PP. 377-9, Eliade Page website ^*^]

'We cannot know a thing without knowing its merits, its qualities. All knowledge or science is based on a form of praise. A dictionary is but the praise of words. The works of science are filled with glorification. Everything which is an object of knowledge is as such a deity and is glorified in the Scripture that deals with it.' (Vijayananda Tripathi, 'Devata tattva,' Sanmarga,III, 1942.) ^*^

'Meditation is of two kinds, gross and subtle. In the subtle form meditation is done on the "body of sound," that is, the mantra, of the deity. In the gross form meditation is on one image with hands and feet. . . . The suprasensory can seldom be reached by the mind; hence one should concentrate on the gross form.' (Yamala Tantra.) 'The worshipper should engage in meditation, gradually concentrating his mind on all the parts of the body of his chosen deity, one after another, from the feet to the head. He can thus acquire such an intense state of concentration that during his undisturbed meditation the whole body of the chosen deity will appear to his mind's eye as an indivisible form. In this way the meditation on the deity in its formal aspect will gradually become profound and steady.' (Siva Candra Vidyarnava Bhattacharya, Principles of Tantra [ed. Woodroffe, I, (1916), 134, or p. 874 [1952 ed.], quoted with slight changes.) ^*^

Japa, the Repetition of Mantras: 'Japa, as the repetition of a mantra, has been compared to the action of a man shaking a sleeper to wake him up.' (Woodroffe, The Garland of Letters, P. 211, with slight changes.) 'Once the image of the chosen deity has been formed in the mind by concentration, the seed-mantra should be repeated, withdrawing the mind from all other thoughts....... Japa is of three kinds, audible, articulate but inaudible, and mental....... Japa concentration by this -means is perfected, the consciousness of the worshipper is transferred to the deity represented by the utterance and he ceases to have an individuality distinct from that of the deity.' (Barada Kantha Majumdar. Principles of Tantra [cd. Woodroffe ], II [1916, 77-8, or pp. 648 ff 1952 ed.], quoted with slight changes.)^*^

Bathing a Deity in Milk

pouring milk on a Shiva trident

Reporting from New Delhi, Emily Wax wrote in the Washington Post: “ Every morning, Hindu devotees haul buckets of fresh, creamy milk into this neighborhood temple, then close their eyes and bow in prayer as the milk is used to bathe a Hindu deity. At the foot of the statue, they leave small baskets of bananas, coconuts, incense sticks and marigolds. Milk is literally the nectar of gods in India. Most temples in the south use it at least twice a day to bathe Hindu statues, since it symbolizes the eternal goodness of human beings and is seen as a generous offering to the faith. [Source: Emily Wax, Washington Post, April 30, 2008]

“Across the country, milk also symbolizes life and death. Bodies are anointed with purified butter before cremation. Milk is a main ingredient in paneer — a cheese-cube dish known here as the king of all foods — as well as yogurt, curries, tea and sweets. And milk is often the main meal for children younger than five.

Gods Go Hungry Due to High Food Prices

In 2008, during the World Food Crisis, Emily Wax wrote in the Washington Post: “Recently, Ram Gopal Atrey, the head priest at Prachin Hanuman Mandir, noticed donations thinning for the morning prayers. He knew exactly why: inflation. With prices soaring for staples such as cooking oils, wheat, lentils, milk and rice across the globe, priests like Atrey say they are seeing the consequences in their neighborhood temples, where even the poorest of the poor have long made donations to honor their faith. [Source: Emily Wax, Washington Post, April 30, 2008]

"But today the common man is tortured by the increases in prices," Atrey lamented during one early morning prayer, or puja, adding that donations of milk were down by as much as 50 percent. He had recently met with colleagues from other temples, along with imams from local mosques, who reported similar experiences. "If poor people don't even have enough for bread, how will they donate milk to the gods?" he said. "This is very serious."

“At a hilltop temple in New Delhi, visitors headed inside for a 6:30 p.m. puja, during which the statue of a Hindu deity would be bathed in milk, sandalwood paste, water and honey. S. Shanti, 27, said she came to pray for a job in India's railway service. With prices rising and a lack of work, she said, she had less to offer to the temple. "How can we manage?" Shanti said, as she looked over at other worshipers bearing small baskets of bananas and coconuts. "God please grant my wishes. Things are so costly now. We need help."”

Online Puja

Ambika Behal wrote in Forbes: There’s no question that religion sells in India — it’s a market that’s estimated to be worth over $30 billion. The figures prompted Saumya Vardhan, who holds an MBA degree from Imperial College in London, to start up Shubh Puja in late 2013; Shubh, which means ‘auspicious’ and Puja in reference to the act of worship. The platform was created using technology as the intermediary — providing ‘a puja one click away’ experience for users. [Source: Ambika Behal, Forbes, August 20, 2016]

Customers from anywhere in the world can schedule and participate in rituals customized for them, in India, through Skype or Facetime. The priests on-the-ground handle everything — bringing the offerings needed for the ceremony and informing a customer of when they need to log in — and what recitations, if any, they should participate with during the ceremonies, which are still conducted in the ancient Sanskrit language.

“It’s a very fragmented industry, which saw no innovation for a long time,” says Vardhan, whose company hires a small full-time staff of priests, but also maintains a wide net of tightly vetted priests, “a lot of people don’t know that the priests have done undergraduate and Masters degrees in these subjects — we have specialists in each field.” “There are so many scams and scandals with spirituality, we want to make people aware of the science and facts behind these rituals,” says Vardhan, “no one is talking about the science behind it — it all has some significance, some science.”

She’s created a blog to cover this. For example, answering the question why children are fed sweet curd before exams: because scientifically curd cools the body, calms the digestive system, the knock-on-effect is a clearer mind. Her customer base logs in from around the world, but priests are also regularly requested in New Delhi, where Shubh Puja is headquartered. Prices are fixed, so priests cannot throw out random figures based on their perception of the wealth of the individual requiring services, as typically happens.

Outsourced Hindu Prayers

Time-strapped Indians, who can’t make it to a temple to make offerings, can now have prayers said for them online. Reporting from Varanasi, Henry Chu wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “Got an appeal for better health, or a nicer boss? Want a rich mate, or better grades for your kids? If you can't make the pilgrimage here, an Internet connection and a small fee can book you the services of a priest at the Vishwanath Temple who will, as Indians like to say, "do the needful" for your plea to be heard on high. "It's a demand of this day and age," said Radhey Shyam Pathak, who runs the temple's daily affairs. "This was not possible even 10 years back. There are many people who wish to come here but cannot. We can help." [Source: Henry Chu, Los Angeles Times, December 24, 2007 /+/]

copper Sri Yantra

“The temple went online in August 2007, and within a month received 180,000 hits on its website, shrikashivishwanath.org. That is more than double the average number of devotees who show up in person every month, braving difficult journeys, the smelly warren of narrow alleys leading to the temple, the security pat-downs outside the entrance and the gantlet of vendors hawking sweets, garlands of marigolds and jasmine, and other religious paraphernalia. Cyber-worshipers can be spared all of that — and in the bargain save some time, a commodity in increasingly short supply for the growing cohort of middle-class Indians busy with the trappings of secular affluence, from attending cocktail parties to shuttling their children to after-school tutorials. /+/

“Besides outsourcing a puja, or prayers and obeisances, visitors to the Vishwanath Temple's website can enjoy a virtual audience with the Shiva lingam, the phallus-shaped symbol that represents the deity and resides in the temple's inner sanctum. Animated icons shower the sacred image with offerings of flowers or milk. Hymns and chants drone through the speakers. "This is an association of religion and science — old beliefs and new ways to follow them," said Abhishek Drolia, one of the website's designers. /+/

“Going high-tech is the latest twist in the history of the Vishwanath Temple, which for a thousand years has been home to one of the most important Shiva lingams in India. Other well-known shrines around India also have gone into cyberspace, and officials here were keen not to be left behind, especially with millions of Hindus living on distant shores. "It's another way of broadcasting the message of the temple," Pathak said. "It's being mindful that we benefit all mankind." The temple's 22 priests are "gradually adjusting" to serving digital devotees, Pathak said, adding that the prayers conducted for those who book their services online are no different from those for adherents who appear in person. Whether the effect of the prayers is the same, on the god or the believer, depends on one's point of view. /+/

“Shashi Menon, an electronics engineer, stumbled upon the temple's website by accident and ordered a puja on behalf of his 5-year-old son, Sridhar. Menon, 44, lives near Mumbai, in western India; Varanasi is almost clear across the subcontinent. "We knew we wouldn't be able to go there in the near future," Menon said. He acknowledges that purists might take issue with Web-surfing worshipers like him, but that does not decrease the "psychological satisfaction" he felt in having a puja performed for his son in absentia. Ultimately, he said, "it's all about faith." "If you were to look at it in a more religious context or orthodox, conservative manner, then it's obviously not the right way to do a puja. You need to be present," Menon said. "But in modern times, you've got to use modern means." /+/

Robots Performing Puja

In some places robots are employed by people to perform puja. Anthropologist Holly Walters wrote in The Conversation: In 2017, a technology firm in India introduced a robotic arm to perform “aarti,” a ritual in which a devotee offers an oil lamp to the deity to symbolize the removal of darkness. This particular robot was unveiled at the Ganpati festival, a yearly gathering of millions of people in which an icon of Ganesha, the elephant-headed god, is taken out in a procession and immersed in the Mula-Mutha river in Pune in central India. [Source: Holly Walters, Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology, Wellesley College, The Conversation, March 8, 2023]

Ever since, that robotic aarti arm has inspired several prototypes, a few of which continue to regularly perform the ritual across India today, along with a variety of other religious robots throughout East Asia and South Asia. Robotic rituals even now include an animatronic temple elephant in Kerala on India’s southern coast, where a robotic arm is used to worship by maneuvering a candle in front of the Hindu god Ganesha.

Ritual automation, or at least the idea of robotic spiritual practice, isn’t new in South Asian religions. Historically, this has included anything from special pots that drip water continuously for bathing rituals that Hindus routinely perform for their deity icons, called abhisheka, to wind-powered Buddhist prayer wheels — the kinds often seen in yoga studios and supply stores.

Thaneswar Sarmah, a Sanskrit scholar and literary critic, argues that the first Hindu robot appeared in the stories of King Manu, the first king of the human race in Hindu belief. Manu’s mother, Saranyu — herself the daughter of a great architect — built an animate statue to perfectly perform all of her household chores and ritual obligations. Folklorist Adrienne Mayor remarks similarly that religious stories about mechanized icons from Hindu epics, such as the mechanical war chariots of the Hindu engineer god Visvakarman, are often viewed as the progenitors of religious robots today. Furthermore, these stories are sometimes interpreted by modern-day nationalists as evidence that ancient India has previously invented everything from spacecraft to missiles.

Puja-Performing Ganesh robot

Issues with Puja-Performing Robots

Walters wrote in The Conversation: The recent use of AI and robotics in religious practice is leading to concerns among Hindus and Buddhists about the kind of future to which automation could lead. In some instances, the debate among Hindus is about whether automated religion promises the arrival of humanity into a bright, new, technological future or if it is simply evidence of the coming apocalypse. In other cases, there are concerns that the proliferation of robots might lead to greater numbers of people leaving religious practice as temples begin to rely more on automation than on practitioners to care for their deities. Some of these concerns stem from the fact that many religions, both in South Asia and globally, have seen significant decreases in the number of young people willing to dedicate their lives to spiritual education and practice over the past few decades. Furthermore, with many families living in a diaspora scattered across the world, priests or “pandits” are often serving smaller and smaller communities. [Source: Holly Walters, Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology, Wellesley College, The Conversation, March 8, 2023]

But if the answer to the problem of fewer ritual specialists is more robots, people still question whether ritual automation will benefit them. They also question the concurrent use of robotic deities to embody and personify the divine, since these icons are programmed by people and therefore reflect the religious views of their engineers.

Scholars often note that these concerns all tend to reflect one pervasive theme — an underlying anxiety that, somehow, the robots are better at worshipping gods than humans are. They can also raise inner conflicts about the meaning of life and one’s place in the universe. For Hindus and Buddhists, the rise of ritual automation is especially concerning because their traditions emphasize what religion scholars refer to as orthopraxy, where greater importance is placed on correct ethical and liturgical behavior than on specific beliefs in religious doctrines. In other words, perfecting what you do in terms of your religious practice is viewed as more necessary to spiritual advancement than whatever it is you personally believe.

This also means that automated rituals appear on a spectrum that progresses from human ritual fallibility to robotic ritual perfection. In short, the robot can do your religion better than you can because robots, unlike people, are spiritually incorruptible. This not only makes robots attractive replacements for dwindling priesthoods but also explains their increasing use in everyday contexts: People use them because no one worries about the robot getting it wrong, and they are often better than nothing when the options for ritual performance are limited.

In the end, turning to a robot for religious restoration in modern Hinduism or Buddhism might seem futuristic, but it belongs very much to the present moment. It tells us that Hinduism, Buddhism and other religions in South Asia are increasingly being imagined as post- or transhuman: deploying technological ingenuity to transcend human weaknesses because robots don’t get tired, forget what they’re supposed to say, fall asleep or leave. More specifically, this means that robotic automation is being used to perfect ritual practices in East Asia and South Asia — especially in India and Japan — beyond what would be possible for a human devotee, by linking impossibly consistent and flawless ritual accomplishment with an idea of better religion.

Text Sources: “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “Encyclopedia of the World’s Religions” edited by R.C. Zaehner (Barnes & Noble Books, 1959); “Encyclopedia of the World Cultures: Volume 3 South Asia “ edited by David Levinson (G.K. Hall & Company, New York, 1994); Wikipedia, BBC, National Geographic, the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Reuters, AP, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated March 2024