How a Hindu Worships: At a Home Shrine (1968)

This is a shrine in a traditional middle-class Brahmin home in Madras, South India. It's in a room set apart from the rest of the house, usually entered into only for the purpose of worshipping the sacred image placed within the small cupboard, and contains little that is not used directly in the worship of that household deity. Before worship can be done there each day, the room and its furnishings must be made ready. This is the task of the lady of the house, the wife of the head of the family. The various utensils in this particular home of silver, polished and clean, are placed in readiness for their use. Fresh flowers will have been purchased earlier in the morning from a street vendor and placed in decoration over the shrine doors. To complete the preparations, an auspicious design is made on the floor in front of the shrine. Made of rice flour according to specifications handed down from mother to daughter, the designs change with the seasons, months, and days. This is called in Tamil a kolam, or in Sanskrit, a rangavali. It is used to mark the area for all to see as holy ground. The hanging lamp provides almost the only source of light in this otherwise quite dark sanctuary deep within the interior of the home. The lady's husband enters. He wears only a long white dhoti cloth covering the lower half of his body. His upper body is bared out of respect for the god within the shrine to whom he now prostrates in commencement of his worship. The lord is awakened from his slumber and prayers in Tamil and Sanskrit are addressed to him. And when the doors are opened, there is the lord Krishna, who has been worshipped in this image form by this family for generations. The worshipper removes wilted leaves from yesterday's services and makes ready for the fresh offerings of leaves from the sacred basil plant that, along with offerings of water and later cooked food, will be used in the worship of god. But first, the water must be blessed. This he does by praying to the spirit goddesses of the Ganges and the Cauvery rivers to sanctify what is to be used, making it the holiest of holy waters that will be offered to the lord Krishna and his invisible company of divine attendance. The cups themselves are ritually rinsed for their holy task. One of the chief features of Hindu domestic worship is the use of many water libations. Each one of the cups here before the shrine has a name and a particular function to play in the offerings of water that comprise the first section of this morning worship. For the deity worshipped here is conceived of as the supreme guest in this family's home. The visible presence of the infinite lord who has come down, taking form and shape out of his love and concern for man in the small bronze image. Here he, god, in this home known as Krishna, receives the hospitable offerings of his devotees who advance to this, their divine guest, symbolic spoons full of water and leaves. To him who may be seen face to face. According to ancient Indian norms of hospitality, when a visitor approaches one's home for a visit, the host goes out to the gate to meet him, there invites him to stay a while and makes good his offer by bringing water to quench his thirst after a long day in the sun, water to wash his feet, hot and dusty from walking barefooted along the paths and byways of the journey, water for bathing as well as a clean change of clothes, a refreshing meal, possibly some kind of diversion or entertainment, and finally a place to sleep. As it is with the ancient Indian norms of hospitality in receiving a guest, so it is in the first offerings of worship to the supreme guest in one's home, commencing even with water for brushing the teeth. Other water offerings will be water for drinking, water for washing the lord's feet, water for gargling and water for a symbolic bathing. In all, some 60 advances of spoons full of water will be done, taking in all perhaps 20 to 30 minutes. Now, although it is not done every day, a second major portion of the daily liturgies is to give the image a real bath alongside a small stone called a salagrama. This is done with milk from the kitchen. And the milk will also be rinsed off. This portion of the bath is the second major portion of the daily liturgical offerings to God. And when the image itself is not bathed, simply the small stone in its place is bathed, this salagrama stone. But on occasion, the image will be given a careful bath, as here. All this is accompanied by prayers, either aloud or whispered, to the cosmic being known as Purusha, followed by Tamil verses attributed to the saint Periyavar. A third major portion of the daily liturgy, after the 60 water offerings have been made in the first portion and the milk bath has been finished in the second, comes now as the image is decorated with clean apparel, placed back in the cupboard, and then given, as it were, perfume or talcum in the form of scented sandalwood paste. That is mixed here in a spoon and then daubed on the stone and on the image. And continuing by camphor offerings, the husband goes to the kitchen for the necessary coals and then advances this sweet-smelling incense to God and to his invisible company of heavenly companions believed also to be present. The husband moves into the fourth portion of his daily liturgies now with the recitation of what represents all the holy writings that praise the Lord. This he does by reciting the first two lines of each of the Vedas, brief portions of the Upanishads, the Sutras, Epics and Puranas, and various of the Vaishnava saints' utterances. All this while, the wife is in the nearby kitchen, probably within earshot, preparing cooked food for the family meal to be consumed after the morning worship service is over. By the time her husband has finished making those twelve offerings of leaves to each of the twelve names of the Lord Vishnu, she has dished out the food and waits for her signal to come in with it. At his beckoning, she brings in the food, rice and curds, and sets them down on the ground marked off as holy in front of the shrine. There will also be curried vegetables, pepper water, all things that are to be consumed in the family meal, and, finishing touch, ghee poured over the rice. Thus the food intended for the family is offered first to the Supreme Guest, the Lord in His image form, who is gracious enough to come into their home and abide there with them. Blessing this food, the husband sprinkles water and basil leaves onto it, petitioning Mother Earth and Truth itself to sanctify the offerings as fit for Krishna and His divine company, and, with sweeping motions over the food, the worshipper mutters salutations to the five vital breaths And the recitations that conclude this fifth portion of the daily liturgies, the presentation of food offerings, are taken from the Tamil utterances attributed to the female saint Andal, whose offerings to the Lord were always accompanied by love and selflessness. Now, with this, the daily worship of the Lord is almost over. The food that is, as it were, left over from the Lord's table will be returned to the kitchen, and, when morning worship is over, eaten gratefully by the family. But, before that, the last elements of the liturgy are to be concluded. Dessert will be offered, bananas, and digestants in the form of fresh pond leaves and betel nuts, and, all the while that the flame burns from ignited camphor, the worshipper will recite passages drawn from Tamil literature and dedicated to the pleasure of the deity who manifests himself thus to man in his own place. A last water libation will be made, and the cups will then be emptied and placed upside down on their plate. Now, at the beginning of the worship cycle, the very first water offerings were made to this man's guru, his preceptor, or his teacher, and, just as he was honored at the commencement of the liturgy, he is now going to be honored again toward the conclusion. This time, the honor will be given to him by symbolically washing his feet in the form of footprints left on a hallowed white cloth, and the leftover water that is used in this gesture of respect is put aside in the square dish used earlier in bathing the image. Why worship in the home plays such a dominant and satisfying role is made clear in the concluding rites. A man or a woman can be a good Hindu and never in his life set foot in a temple. Hinduism is not a congregational faith. Instead, the locus of most of its activity is in the home. Morning worship is essentially over now. The leftover water, that which has touched the very presence of the Lord and is thereby sanctified beyond measure, is now going to be offered to members of the family in a kind of communion service. Indeed, the participants here, the husband who has already served himself first, then serving in turn his mother and his wife, here the participants receive the elements in both kinds. First, the water used to honor the Lord. And second, the water used to wash the symbolic feet of the family's spiritual preceptor. Worshiping thus together, coming before the Lord's very presence, receiving from him not only food as his leftovers for sustenance, but also the holiest of all holy waters to revive them spiritually and to cleanse them of sins, there is no need to resort to temples. The divine guest is finally offered rest in the concluding portion of the morning liturgies. This done, the husband moves out of the sanctuary and toward the other more mundane duties of the world in which he lives and works. So it is then that worship is done daily in the homes of traditional Hindus of piety. Satsang with Mooji www.mooji.org