Nature of Tantric tradition

Tantrism, which appears in both Buddhism and Hinduism, influenced many religious trends and movements from the 5th century CE, but some of it was meant for esoteric circles. Claiming to show in times of religious decadence a new way to the highest goal, Tantrism bases itself upon mystic speculations concerning divine creative energy (shakti). Tantrism is thought to be a method of conquering transcendent powers and realizing oneness with the highest principle by Yogic and ritual means—in part magical and orgiastic—which are also supposed to achieve other supranormal goals.

Tantrists take for granted that all factors in the macrocosm and the microcosm are closely connected. The adept (sadhaka) has to perform the relevant rites on his own body, transforming its normal, chaotic state into a “cosmos.” The macrocosm is conceived as a complex system of powers that by means of ritual-psychological techniques can be activated and organized within the individual body of the adept. Contrary to the ascetic emancipation methods of other groups, the Tantrists emphasize the activation and sublimation of the possibilities of their own body, without which salvation is believed to be beyond reach.

The Tantrists of the Vamchara (“the left-hand practice”) sought to intensify their own sense impressions by making enjoyment, or sensuality (bhoga), their principal concern: the adept pursued his spiritual objective through his natural functions and inclinations, which were sublimated and then gratified in rituals to disintegrate his normal personality. This implies that cultic life was largely interiorized and that the whole world was given a new and esoteric meaning.

The esoteric part of Tantric worship (puja) is complicated and in many respects different from the ceremonies that it has influenced. Tantric devotees interpret their texts by means of an ambiguous “twilight” language and distinguish between the texts’ “external” and their esoteric meaning. Tantrists describe states of consciousness with erotic terminology and describe physiological processes with cosmological terminology. They proceed from “external” to “internal” worship and adore the Goddess mentally, offering their hearts as her throne and their self-renunciation as “flowers.”

According to Tantrism, concentration is intended to evoke an internal image of the deity and to resuscitate the powers inherent in it so that the symbol changes into mental experience. This “symbolic ambiguity” is also much in evidence in the esoteric interpretation of ritual acts performed in connection with images, flowers, and other cult objects and is intended to bring about a transfiguration in the mind of the adept.

The mantras (sacred utterances, such as hum, hrim, and kleem) are believed to be indispensable means of entering into contact with the power they bear and of transcending mundane existence. Most potent are the monosyllabic, bija (“seed”) mantras, which constitute the main element of longer formulas and embody the essence of divine power as the eternal, indestructible prototypes from which anything phenomenal derives its existence. The cosmos itself owes its very structure and harmony to them. Also important is the introduction of spiritual qualities or divine power into the body (nyasa) by placing a finger on the relevant spot (accompanied by a mantra).

Tantrists who follow the “right-hand path” attach much value to the Yoga that developed under their influence and to bhakti and aspire to union with the Supreme by emotional-dynamic means. For them, Yoga is a self-abnegation to reach a state of ecstatic blissfulness in which the passive soul is lifted up by divine grace.

There is also a Tantric mantra-yoga (discipline through spells), which operates with formulas, and a hatha-yoga, (Sanskrit: “union of force”). Hatha-yoga incorporates normal Yogic practices such as abstinences; observances; bodily postures; breath control; withdrawal of the mind from external objects; concentration, contemplation, and identification with the aid of mudras (i.e., ritual intertwining of fingers or gestures expressing the metaphysical aspect of the ceremonies or the transformation effected by the mantras); and muscular contractions. It also consists of internal purifications (e.g., washing out stomach and bowels), shaking the abdomen, and some forms of self-torture. The whole process is intended to “control the ‘gross body’ in order to free the ‘subtle body.’”

Some Tantrists employ laya-yoga (“reintegration by emergence”), in which the female nature-energy (representing the shakti), which is said to remain dormant and coiled in the form of a serpent (kundalini) representing the uncreated, is awakened and made to rise through the six centres (chakras) of the body, which are located along the central artery of the subtle body, from the root center to the lotus of a thousand petals at the top of the head, where it merges into the Purusha, the male Supreme Being. Once the union of shakti and Purusha has become permanent, according to this doctrine, wonderful visions and powers come to the adept, who then is emancipated. Some of the Tantric texts also pursue worldly objectives involving magic or medicine.

Tantric and Shakta views of nature, humanity, and the sacred

The Tantric movement is sometimes inextricably interwoven with Shaktism, which assumes the existence of one or more shaktis. These are “creative energies” that are inherent in and proceed from God and are also capable of being imagined as female deities. Shakti is the deciding factor in the salvation of the individual and in the processes of the universe because God acts only through his energy—which, personified as a goddess, is his spouse. Her role is very different in the various systems: she may be considered the central figure in a philosophically established doctrine, the dynamic aspect of brahman, producing the universe through her maya, or mysterious power of illusion; a capricious demonic ruler of nature in its destructive aspects; a benign mother goddess; or the queen of a celestial court. One form of Shaktism identifies the goddess (usually Durga) with brahman and worships her as the ruler of the universe by virtue of whom even Shiva exists. As Mahayogini (“Great Mistress of Yoga”), she produces, maintains, and reabsorbs the world. As the Eternal Mother, she is exalted in the Devimahatmya (“Glorification of the Goddess”) section of the Markandeya-purana (an important Shakta encyclopaedic text). In the Bengal cult of the goddess Kali, she demands bloody sacrifices from her worshipers lest her creative potency fail her. This cult also propounds the belief that birth and death are inseparable, that joy and grief spring from the same source, and that the frightening manifestations of the divine should be faced calmly.

In all of his incarnations Vishnu is united with his consort, Lakshmi. The sacred tales of his various relations with her manifestations led his worshipers to view human devotion as parallel to divine love and hence as universal, eternal, and sanctified. In Vaishnava Tantrism, Lakshmi plays an important part as God’s shakti. In his supreme state, Vishnu and his shakti are indissolubly associated with one another and thus constitute the personal manifestation of the supreme brahman, also called Lakshmi-Narayana. In visual imagery, Lakshmi never leaves Vishnu’s bosom. In the first stage of creation, she awakens in her dual aspect of action-and-becoming, in which she is the instrumental and material cause of the universe; Vishnu himself is the efficient cause. In the second stage, her “becoming” aspect is manifested in the grosser forms of the souls and the power of maya, which is the immaterial source of the universe. In displaying her power, she takes into consideration the accumulated karma of the beings, judging mundane existence as merit and demerit. Presented in myth as God’s wife and the queen of the universe.

Pancharatra Vaishnavism emphasizes that Lakshmi—who in the mythological sphere intercedes with her husband for the preservation of the world—spontaneously and by virtue of her own power differentiates herself from Vishnu because she has in view the liberation of the souls. This current of thought complicated its explanation of the relation between God and the universe—which was at the same time an attempt at assigning to God’s manifestations a place in a harmonious theological and cosmological system—with an evolutionist theory of successive creations. God is assumed to manifest himself also in three other figures, mythologically his brothers, who, each with his own responsibility, have not only a creative but also an ethical function, by which they assist those who seek to achieve final emancipation.

Tantric ritual and magical practices

The ritual of the left-hand Tantrists was one in which all of the taboos of conventional Hinduism were conscientiously violated. Thus, in place of the traditional five elements (tattvas) of the Hindu cosmos, these Tantrists used the five m’s: mamsa (flesh, meat), matsya (fish), madya (fermented grapes, wine), mudra (frumentum, cereal, parched grain, or gestures), and maithuna (sexual union). This latter element was made particularly antinomian through the involvement of forbidden women—such as the wife of another man or a low-caste woman—who was identified with the Goddess. Menstrual blood, strictly taboo in conventional Hinduism, was also used in Tantric rites. Such rituals, which are described in Tantric texts and in tracts against Tantrists, made the Tantrists notorious. It is likely, however, that the rituals were not regularly performed except by a small group of highly trained adepts; the usual Tantric ceremony was purely symbolic and even more fastidious than the pujas in Hindu temples.

The cult of the Shaktas is based on the principle of the ritual sublimation of natural impulses to maintain and reproduce life. Shakta adepts are trained to direct all their energies toward the conquest of the Eternal. The sexual act and the consumption of consecrated meat or liquor are esoterically significant means of realizing the unity of flesh and spirit, of the human and the divine. They are considered not sinful acts but effective means of salvation. Ritual union—which may also be accomplished symbolically—is, for both partners, a form of sacralization, the act being a participation in cosmic and divine processes. The experience of transcending space and time, of surpassing the phenomenal duality of spirit and matter, of recovering the primeval unity, the realization of the identity of God and his Shakti, and of the manifested and unmanifested aspects of the All, constitute the very mystery of Shaktism.

The interpretation of doctrines and ritual practice is varied. Extreme Shakta communities, for example, are said to perform the secret nocturnal rites of the shrichakra (“wheel of radiance,” described in the Kularnava-tantra), in which they avail themselves of the natural and esoteric symbolic properties of colors, sounds, and perfumes to intensify their sensual experiences. Most Tantrists, however, eliminate all but the verbal ritual.

Individual and collective Yoga and worship, conducted daily, fortnightly, and monthly “for the delectation of the deity,” are of special importance. After elaborate purifications, the worshipers—who must be initiated, full of devotion toward the guru and God, have control over themselves, be well prepared and pure of heart, know the mysteries of the scriptures, and look forward to the adoration with eagerness—make the prescribed offerings, worship the power of the Divine Mother, and recite the relevant mantras. Having become aware of their own state of divinity, they are qualified to unite sexually with the Goddess. If a woman is, in certain rituals, made the object of sexual worship, the Goddess is first invoked into her; the worshiper is not to cohabit with her until his mind is free from impurity and he has risen to divine status. Union with a low-caste woman helps to transcend all opposites. Union with a woman who belongs to another man is often preferred because it is harder to obtain, nothing is certain in it, and the longing stemming from the separation of lover and beloved is more intense; it is pure preman (divine love). Adoration of a girl of age 16 aims at securing the completeness and perfection of which this number is said to be the expression. However, the texts reiterate how dangerous these rites are for those who are not initiated; those who perform such ritual acts without merging their minds in the Supreme are likely to go to one of the hells.

The esoteric Vaishnava-Sahajiya cult, which arose in Bengal in the 16th century, was another emotional attempt at reconciling the spirit and the flesh. Disregarding social opinion, its adherents, using the natural (sahaja, “born with”) qualities of the senses and stressing the sexual symbolism of Bengal Vaishnavism, reinterpreted the Radha-Krishna legend and sought for the perpetual experience of divine joy. Based on this understanding of the legend, members of the Vaishnava-Sahajiya cult held that, after arduous training, the realization of love can be experienced, because Krishna’s nature is love and the giving of love and because man is identical with Krishna. Women, as the embodiment of a theological principle, could even become spiritual guides, like Radha, conducting the worshipers in their search for realization. After reaching this state, a devotee remains in eternal bliss and can dispense with guru and ritual and be completely indifferent to the world, “steadfast amidst the dance of maya.”

Tantric and Shakta ethical and social doctrines

These ethical and social principles, though fundamentally the same as those promulgated in the classical dharma works, breathe a spirit of liberality: much value is set upon family life and respect for women (the image of the Goddess); no ban is placed on traveling (conventionally regarded as bringing about ritual pollution) or on the remarriage of widows. Although Tantric and Shakta traditions did not oblige their followers to deviate in a socially visible way from the established order, they provided a ritual and a way of life for those who, because of sex or caste, could not participate satisfyingly in the conventional rites.

The ancient Tantric tradition, based on the esoteric tantra literature, has become so interwoven with orthodox Hinduism that it is difficult to define precisely. Although it recognizes an identity between the soul and the cosmos, it emphasizes the internalization of the cosmos rather than the release of the soul to its natural state of unity. The body is the microcosm, and the ultimate state is not only omniscience but total realization of all universal and eternal forces. The body is real, not because it is the function or creation of a real deity but because it contains the deity, together with the rest of the universe. The individual soul does not unite with the One—it is the One, and the body is its function.

Tantrism, though not always in its full esoteric form, is a feature of much modern mystical thought. In Tantrism the consciousness is spoken of as moving—driven by repetition of the mantra and by other disciplines—from gross awareness of the material world to realization of the ultimate unity. The image is of a serpent, coiled and dormant, awakened and driven upward in the body through various stages of enlightenment until it reaches the brain, the highest awareness. The 19th-century mystic Ramakrishna describes the process, which is also what many Hindus seek in their quest for a spiritual experience:

When [the serpent] is awakened, it passes gradually through [various stages], and comes to rest in the heart. Then the mind moves away from [the gross physical senses]; there is perception, and a great brilliance is seen. The worshiper, when he sees this brilliance, is struck with wonder. The [[[serpent]]] moves thus through six stages, and coming to [the highest one], is united with it. Then there is samadhi.…When [the serpent] rises to the sixth stage, the form of God is seen. But a slight veil remains; it is as if one sees a light within a lantern, and thinks that the light itself can be touched, but the glass intervenes.…In samadhi, nothing external remains. One cannot even take care of his body anymore; if milk is put into his mouth, he cannot swallow. If he remains for twenty-one days in this condition, he is dead. The ship puts out to sea and returns no more.

Vernacular literatures

Most of the texts cited in this survey are Sanskrit texts, which constitute the oldest layer of extant Hindu literature. But the sacred literature of India is not as monolithic as these texts might suggest. Several other essential elements exist: independent sacred literature in languages other than Sanskrit and material in other languages related to the Sanskrit texts either as sources of material now preserved only in Sanskrit or as new texts originating as translations of Sanskrit texts. Because Sanskrit has been in intimate contact with the mother tongues of India for such a long time, it is often impossible to determine in which of these categories a particular vernacular text belongs.

Indologists usually emphasize the influence of Sanskritic culture on vernacular culture, and indeed this influence was considerable. Sanskritic influence was already in evidence in the earliest Tamil (a principal Dravidian language) literature, perhaps dating from before the Common Era. At this time in South India the orthodox cults were aristocratic in character and were supported by kings and chiefs who gained in prestige by patronizing Brahmans. The Tamils were still primarily devoted to their local traditions, some of which, however, were becoming Sanskritized. The pastoral god Murugan was identified with Skanda, and his mother, the fierce war goddess Korravai, with Durga. Varunan, a sea god who had adopted the name of an old Vedic god but otherwise had few Vedic features, and Mayon, a black god who was a rural divinity with many of the characteristics of Krishna in his pastoral aspect, also are depicted in Tamil literature. The final Sanskritization of the Tamils was brought about through the patronage of the Pallava kings of Kanchipuram, who began to rule in the 4th century CE and who financed the making of many temples and fine religious sculptures. Similar processes took place in the Deccan, Bengal, and other regions.

Sanskritization is a term that refers to a style of text that imitates the customs and manners of the Brahmans. But, although most sacred texts in Sanskrit were composed by Brahmans, many were composed by lower-class authors. Likewise, although some sacred texts in vernacular languages were written by authors of lower castes, many others were written by Brahmans. In addition, because Sanskrit ceased to be spoken as a primary language soon after the Vedas were composed, it is likely that most of the thoughts underlying all subsequent Sanskrit literature emerged first in some other language. The issue is further clouded by the fact that, though Sanskrit

texts tend to be written and vernacular traditions are primarily oral, there are important oral traditions in Sanskrit too (including the traditions of the two great Sanskrit epics), and there are important manuscript traditions in some of the non-Sanskritic languages (such as Bengali and Tamil). Indeed, written and oral versions of the epics and Puranas have been, from the very start, in constant symbiosis.

Little relevance, therefore, attaches to the distinction between written and oral traditions. A story is narrated, a process that is designated in Sanskrit by such words as purana (ancient story) and akhyana (illustrative narrative). In the oldest source, the Rigveda, myths are not so much told as alluded to; it is in the later Vedic literature of the Brahmanas that narratives are found, and these are often prejudiced by the liturgical concerns of the authors.

The recitation of certain myths was prescribed for various rituals. The epic Mahabharata states that Vedic stories were narrated “in the pauses of the ritual,” probably by Brahmans. The sutas (charioteers and panegyrists), who celebrated the feats of great rulers, were the mythographers of the Kshatriyas (the warrior class). The suttas were popular narrators of myth and legend and developed their own bardic repertoire, which was extended to higher mythology. They—and other wanderers who found ready audiences at sacrifices or places of pilgrimage—disseminated the lore.

Narrators continue to repeat and embroider the ancient stories of gods, sages, and kings. At an early stage their narratives were dramatized and gave rise to the Sanskrit theatre, in which epic mythic themes preponderate, and to the closely related dance, which survives in the now largely South Indian schools of bharata natyam (traditional dance) and the kathakali (narrative dance) of Kerala. Thus, even in Sanskrit literature, oral performance was an essential component, which further facilitated the assimilation of oral vernacular elements.

Of the four primary Dravidian literatures—Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam—the oldest and best-known is Tamil. The earliest preserved Tamil literature, the so-called Sangam poetry anthologies, dates from the 1st century BCE. These poems are classified by theme into akam (“interior,” primarily love poetry) and Puram (“exterior,” primarily about war, the poverty of poets, and the deaths of kings).

Tamil devotional poetry was remarkable for a number of reasons. It was composed by both men and women, by people of different castes (including “outcastes”), and in a language that was classical (Tamil already had a long and rich literary heritage) but also vernacular, or spoken. Despite all these factors, the poems were frequently hailed as divine revelation and sometimes as the equal of the Sanskrit Vedas.

The bhakti movement has been traced to Tamil poetry, beginning with the poems of the devotees of Shiva called Nayanars and the devotees of Vishnu called Alvars. The Nayanars, who date from about 800 CE, composed intensely personal and devout hymns addressed to the local manifestations of Shiva. The most famous Nayanar lyricists are Appar, Sambandar, and Chuntarar, whose hymns are collected in the Tevaram (c. 11th century). More or less contemporary were their Vaishnava counterparts, the Alvars Poykai, Putan, Peyar, and Tirumankaiyalvar; and in the 8th century the poetess Andal, as well as Periyalvar, Kulachekarar, Tiruppanalvar, and notably Nammalvar, who is held to be the greatest, composed their works. Shrivaishnavas consider Nammalvar’s poems, especially his Tiruvaymoli (“Sacred

Utterance]]”), to be the Tamil Veda.

The devotion of which they sang exemplified the new bhakti movement, which sought a more direct contact between humans and God, carried by a passionate love for the Deity, who would reciprocate by extending his grace to humankind. These saints became the inspiration of theistic systematic religion: the Shaivas for the Shaiva-siddhanta, the Vaishnavas for Vishistadvaita. In Kannada the same movement was exemplified by Basava, whose vachanas (“sayings” or “talks”) achieved great popularity.

New literary genres in Dravidian languages continued to evolve into the 17th and 18th centuries, when the Tamil Chittars (name derived from Sanskrit siddha, “perfected one”), who were eclectic mystics, composed poems noted for the power of their naturalistic diction. The Tamil sense and style of these poems belied the Sanskrit-derived title of their authors, a phenomenon that could stand as a symbol of the complex relationship between the vernacular and Sanskrit religious texts.

The main languages derived from Sanskrit are Bengali, Hindi (with its many dialects, of which Maithili is the oldest and Urdu, heavily influenced by Persian and Arabic and written in a Perso-Arabic script, is the most important), Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi, Oriya, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Assamese, Nepali, Rajasthani, and Sinhalese. Most of these languages began to develop literary traditions about 1000 CE.

Although the earliest texts in Hindi are sometimes attributed to the 13th–14th-century Muslim poet Amir Khosrow, it was not until the 15th century that Hindi literature produced its own great religious lyricists. The earliest of these lyricists were the disciples of Ramananda (c. 140), who was a follower of the philosopher Ramanuja. The most famous of these lyricists is Kabir, a poet and mystic who was the forerunner of Sikhism. Tulsidas, apart from his Ramcharitmanas, composed Ramaite lyrics. Surdas (1483–1563), a follower of the Vallabha school of Vedanta, is known for his Sursagar (“Ocean of the Poems of Sursagar”), a collection of poems based on the stories of the childhood of Krishna found in the Bhagavata-purana. Perhaps the best-known bhakti poems are those of Mira Bai (1503–73), a Rajput princess who composed mostly in a local dialect of Hindi. She wrote passionate love poems to Krishna, whom she regarded as her husband and lover. Her bhajans (devotional songs) are sung by Hindus both privately and in public performances in India and throughout the diaspora. In the Marathi tradition, Namdev (1270?–1350?) celebrated Vishnu, particularly in his manifestation as Vitthoba at the Pandharpur temple; and in the 17th century Tukaram, the greatest poet of this literature, sang of the god of love in numerous hymns.

The importance of these writers is not limited to literature. A small sect, the Kabirpanthis, acknowledges Kabir as its founder, but its importance is less than that of the vigorous new religion (Sikhism) founded by one of Kabir’s disciples, Nanak.

Krishna and Radha Krishna and Radha, detail of a Kishangarh painting, mid-18th century; in a private collection.

Although the earliest Hindu text in Bengali is a mid-15th-century poem about Radha and Krishna, texts in praise of gods and goddesses, known as mangal-kavyas, surely existed in oral versions long before then. In later Bengal Vaishnavism, the emphasis shifts from service and surrender to mutual attachment and attraction between God (i.e., Krishna) and humankind: God is said to yearn for the worshiper’s identification with himself, which is his gift to the wholly purified devotee. The mystical and devotional possibilities of the Krishna legend are subordinated to religious practice; the divine sport and wonderful feats of this youthful hero are interpreted symbolically and allegorically. Thus, the highest fruition of bhakti is admission to the eternal sport of Krishna and his beloved Radha, whose sacred love story is explained as the mutual love between God and the human soul. Various gradations of bhakti are distinguished, such as awe, subservience, and parental affection. These are correlated with the persons of the Krishna legend; the highest and most intimate emotion is said to be the love of Radha and her girlfriends for Krishna.

A particularly rich Bengali tradition concentrated on the love of Radha, who symbolizes the human soul, for Krishna, the supreme god. In this tradition are Chandidas, a 15th-century poet known for his love songs, and the Maithili poet Vidyapati (c. 1400). The single most influential figure, however, was Chaitanya, who in the 16th century renewed Krishnaism. He left no writings but inspired many hagiographies, among the most important of which is the Chaitanya-charitamrita (“Nectar of Chaitanya’s Life”) by Krishna Das (born 1517).

Chaitanya had a profound and lasting effect on the religious sentiments of the people of Bengal. He propagated the community celebration (sankirtana) of Krishna as the most powerful means of bringing about the proper bhakti attitude. Chaitanya also introduced the worship of God, the director of the senses, through the very activity of the senses, which must be free from all egoism and completely filled with the intense desire (preman) for the satisfaction of the beloved (i.e., Krishna).

Another form of religious lyric are the so-called padas (verses). Govinda Das (1537–1612) is one of the greatest poets in this bhakti genre of poetry in which divine love is symbolized by human love. The songs of Ramprasad Sen (1718–75) similarly honour Shakti as mother of the universe and are still in wide devotional use.

The complex interaction between Sanskrit and non-Sanskrit religious classics may be seen in the development of the epics. The two great Sanskrit epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, and many Puranas (especially the Bhagavata-purana) were rendered in various vernaculars. These works were not literal translations but free versions in which the authors inserted their own emphases, which differed both from the original and from those of other authors. The oldest vernacular version of the Ramayana is the Tamil translation, the Iramavataram by Kampan (c. 12th century), a work of high literary distinction that is suffused with devotion (bhakti). A Telugu rendering was made by Ranganatha about 1300. Several translations in Bengali include some interesting and probably authentic variations from the “official” Rama story by Valmiki, the best-known translation being that of Krittibas Ojha (1450). Equally, if not more, famous is Ramcharitmanas (“Holy Lake of the Acts of Rama”).

The Mahabharata was rendered in Bengali about 1600 and into Telugu by Nannaya and Tikkana in the 13th century. The Bhagavata-purana, which was translated frequently (e.g., into Bengali by Maladhar Vasu, 1480), was popular because it gave the canonical account of Krishna’s life and especially his boyhood, which is the perennial inspiration of the bhakti poets.

The teacher Jnanadeva (also known as Jnaneshvara; 1275–96) composed a commentary on the Bhagavadgita in Marathi that remains a classic in that literature. His work was continued by Eknath (c. 1600), who also composed bhakti poetry. In the 16th century the Kannada poet Gadugu produced a highly individual version of the Mahabharata. In addition to the literal or not-so-literal translations of the Sanskrit epics, the Tamils composed their own epics, notably Ilanko Atikal’s Chilappatikaram (“The Lay of the Anklet”) and its sequel, the Manimekhalai (“Jeweled Girdle”). In Telugu there is the great Palnadu epic; Rajasthani has an entire epic cycle about the hero Pabuji. The remaining vernaculars have also produced many epics of their own.

Much of the classical mythology persists today, and its stories have been conveyed to Hindus through traditional means as well as via the mass media. Mythic illustrations remain favourites in Indian calendar art. Television series and motion pictures called “mythological” are extremely popular, perpetuating the ancient stories, and so are “devotionals,” in which an example of

bhakti is illustrated. The television series Ramayana, for example, was one of the biggest successes in the Indian media. Radio regularly carries bhajans (devotional songs) and classical South Indian songs, the themes of which are often mythic. Narratives from Hindu texts have also been portrayed in popular literature. Many stories became the bases for popular comic books in the 1960s and ’70s. An English-language series called Amar Chitra Katha (“Immortal Stories in Picture Form”), for example, was read by millions of people.

Every orthodox Hindu’s home has at least one corner set aside as a domestic sanctuary where representations of a chosen deity are placed, and puja (worship) is done with prayers, hymns, flowers, and incense. Richer establishments set aside entire rooms as shrines.

New temples have been constructed with modern techniques; one temple in Varanasi (Banaras) contains mirrors onto which are etched the entire Ramcharitmanas. This same poem is the basis of the annual celebration of Ram Lila (the play of Rama) in northern India, in which the entire community participates. The story of Rama was evoked by Mahatma Gandhi when he set the Ram Raj (“Kingdom of Rama”) as India’s governmental ideal.

On occasion, social protesters have armed themselves with myth to make a point. For example, Karna, an antagonist in the Mahabharata who is berated for his low birth, has been extolled in intellectual circles as a truer champion than the aristocratic heroes. Anti-northern groups in Tamil Nadu revised the story of Rama, whose expedition against the demon Ravana was believed by some to be the “Aryan” invasion of South India, by reversing it to abuse Rama and to glorify Ravana.

On a popular level, people at temples and fairs are continually reacquainted with their mythological heritage by pauranikas, tellers of the ancient stories and heirs of the sutas of 3,000 years ago, and no festival ground is complete without tents where the religious are reminded of their myths by pious speakers, modestly compensated by fees but richly rewarded by the honour in which they are held.

J.A.B. van Buitenen

Edward C. Dimock

Arthur Llewellyn Basham

Wendy Doniger

Brian K. Smith

Practical Hinduism

Practical Hinduism is both a quest to achieve well-being and a set of strategies for locating sources of affliction and removing or appeasing them. Characterized in this way, it has much in common with the popular beliefs and practices of many other religions. For example, Roman Catholicism as practiced in many parts of Europe or Mahayana Buddhism in Korea and Taiwan involve, as does Hinduism, petitions and offerings to enshrined divine powers in order to engage their help with all manner of problems and desires. Thus, religions which could hardly differ more vastly in their understanding of the nature of divinity, reality, and causality may nonetheless converge at the level of popular piety.

The presumption that assigns “practical” Hinduism to peasants, labourers, or tribal peoples—while assuming that the high-born, wealthy, and educated would be concerned with spiritual enlightenment and Hinduism’s ultimate aim of liberation (moksha)—is false. Hindu farmers care about their souls at least as much as do Hindu business or professional men and women (if less single-mindedly than world renouncers, who come from all ranks of life). Almost all Hindus dedicate time and energy to rituals designed to obtain prosperity or to remove troubles, to advance their careers, to advance their children’s education and careers, or to protect their families from ill health. Although rural Hindus may have little time for meditative practices, they are fully aware of ultimate truths transcending the everyday. By the same token, the pious urban elite, if more likely to pursue spiritual disciplines, frequently sponsor worship in temples or homes to ensure worldly success. At all levels of the social hierarchy, Hinduism lives through artistic performances: dance and dance-drama, representational arts, poetry, music, and song serve not only to please deities but to transmit the religion’s meaningful narratives and vital truths. One could go so far as to say that it is through the various arts that most Hindu traditions have been transmitted through the millennia.

Both adherents of the faith and those who study it describe Hinduism as a way of life. Thus, they implicitly contrast Hinduism to religions that appear to be primarily located in spaces and times set apart from the everyday—such as “church on Sunday.” Although Hindus have magnificent sacred architecture and a vital tradition of calendrical festivals, the “way of life” description means that religious attitudes and acts permeate ordinary places, times, and activities. For example, bathing, dressing, cooking, eating, disposing of leftovers, and washing the dishes may all be subject to ritual prescriptions in Hindu households. Motivations for such ritualized actions are ascribed to considerations of purity and auspiciousness—an interest that is often linked to maintaining status in a hierarchical social system.

When Hindus interact with deities, considerations of purity may or may not be important. In some Vaishnava traditions, for example, one must remain in a relatively pure state in order to be fit to worship. A Brahman priest of a Krishna temple in the Vallabha sect might refuse food and water from the hands of non-Brahmans, not to show he is better than they are but because his work in the temple demands that he maintain such boundaries. Should he inadvertently lower his own ritual purity, he might displease or offend the deity with whom he is in regular contact, which could threaten human well-being in general.

Vaishnava traditions, however, include an alternative perspective that is conveyed in a well-known tale about Rama. This tale, frequently portrayed in poetry and art, tells of an outcaste tribal woman named Shabari who meets Rama in the forest. Her simple-hearted love for him is so great that she offers him wild berries, which are all she has. She bites each one first to test its sweetness before giving it to her lord, and in so doing she contaminates the berries with saliva, a major source of pollution. Although the berries are highly unacceptable according to the standards of ritual purity, Rama accepts them and eats them blissfully. The message is that the polluted offerings of a lowborn person given to God with a heart full of love are far more pleasing than any ritually pure gift from a less-devout being. Purity of heart, therefore, is more important than bodily purity.

The capacity to see both sides of most matters—cognitive flexibility rather than dogmatic fixity—is one of the most important characteristics of practical Hinduism, which lacks dogma altogether. In this regard, persistent continuities with Hinduism’s ancient roots in Vedic traditions can be discerned. The elaborate sacrificial rituals of Vedic religion have often been described as being focused on obtaining the goods of life—neatly summarized as prosperity, health, and progeny—from divine powers through exacting ritual behaviours. However, in the Upanishads, the last of the Vedic texts, voices emerge that care for neither the rituals nor their promised fruits but are concerned above all with learning the nature of ultimate reality and how the human soul may recognize that indescribable essence in itself. One quest never supplants the other. In Hinduism today there exists, on the one hand, faith in the efficacy of ritual and desire for its worldly fruits and, on the other, disregard for all external practices and material results. Farmers consistently deride the notion that sins are washed away in the waters of sacred rivers, yet they spend small fortunes to travel to and bathe in them.

Devotion

Devotion (bhakti) effectively spans and reconciles the seemingly disparate aims of obtaining aid in solving worldly problems and locating one’s soul in relation to divinity. It is the prime religious attitude in much of Hindu life. The term bhakti is derived from a root that literally means “having a share”; devotion unites without totally merging the identities of worshipers and deities. While some traditions of bhakti radically speak out against ritual, devotion in ordinary life is usually embedded in worship, vows, and pilgrimages—three major elements within practical Hinduism.

Theistic devotion presents itself as an easy path, obliterating the need for expensive sacrificial rituals, difficult ascetic practices, and scriptural knowledge. All of these are understood as restricted to high-caste males, and in practice specifically to the rich, the spiritually gifted, or the learned. But bhakti is for all human beings, regardless of their rank, gender, or talent. Any person’s chosen deity may help him obtain life’s rewards or avoid its disasters. At the same time, such a chosen deity may be the subject of pure, unmotivated devotional love, recollected in a few moments of morning meditation, in prayers uttered before a shrine, or in the lighting of incense.

Deities

As one Hindu author Sitansu Chakravarti helpfully explains in Hinduism: A Way of Life (1991),

Hinduism is a monotheistic religion which believes that God manifests Himself or Herself in several forms. One is supposed to worship the form that is most appealing to the individual without being disrespectful to other forms of worship.

Although the specific details of ritual action and the names and appearances of deities vary vastly across the subcontinent, commonalities in ritual structure and attitude override the great diversity of ritual practices and associated mythic tales. Whether offering soaked raw chickpeas to Shiva’s agent Bhairuji in Rajasthan, for example, or offering a goat to the Goddess in Bengal, Hindus approach deities through similarly structured actions. These are just as pan-Hindu as the eternal Vedas or the three important deities—Shiva, Vishnu, and the Devi, whose forms and names vary widely but are nonetheless recognizable to Hindus throughout the world.

Ethnographies of rural Hindu practices reveal a wide variety of human relationships with multiple divine beings. These relationships are based not only on family and community affiliations but also on individual life experiences, so that individuals and families often develop idiosyncratic religiosities while remaining well within the range of normative patterns. A household of Gujars (a community associated with herding, dairy production, and agriculture) in a Rajasthani village presents one representative example. This family is particularly devoted to two deities from whom they believe they have received special blessings: Dev Narayan, a regional hero considered to be an avatar or incarnation of Vishnu, and Sundar Mata (“Beautiful Mother”), a local goddess, or village mother.

Dev Narayan is worshipped at multiple sites throughout Rajasthan. However, each of his shrines—in Puvali, in Banjari, and so forth—has its own identity. This particular family lives a short walk from Puvali’s Dev Narayan, but they believe that the more remote Banjari’s Dev Narayan—located near their ancestral home—has blessed two generations with long-awaited sons. They go weekly for darshan (divine vision of a deity’s image) to Puvali’s Dev Narayan, as it is convenient. But when the time comes to hold a major feast of thanksgiving to the deity who granted their prayers, they go to a great deal of extra trouble and added expense to hold this feast at the more remote place of Banjari. If questioned, the adults in this family would state conclusively that there is no difference between the two places and moreover that God is ultimately singular and to be found nowhere on the face of the earth but rather in one’s own body and heart. An everyday Hinduism embedded in materiality motivates the distinction between Banjari and Puvali, while a Hinduism that dissolves differences and seeks transcendent unity denies it. Most persons live their lives holding and moving between both these orientations.

Sundar Mata has only one place, on the edge of the Gujar family’s home village. She has helped them with various problems over the years. In times of trouble, devotees sometimes make inner vows to Sundar Mata (or any deity), no matter where they are. But to fulfill that vow, thankful persons must present themselves and their offerings in her particular place. Sundar Mata’s shrine, like most Hindu places of worship, accumulates gifts dedicated by grateful worshipers. For example, the largest iron trident at Sundar Mata’s shrine was offered by a migrant labourer who lost his suitcase on the train back from Delhi. He vowed to give his village goddess a huge trident if he got the bag back, which he miraculously did.

Durga

Durga, Rajasthani miniature of the Mewar school, mid-17th century, in a private collection. Although a local deity, Sundar Mata is related to pan-Hindu goddesses such as Lakshmi, Parvati, or Durga. They are all thought to be manifestations of a single goddess; name and form are ultimately not significant. Yet again it should be noted that human worshipers attach themselves to certain images and localities, and, for those devoted to Sundar Mata, not any goddess will do.

This family that honours Dev Narayan and Sundar Mata also worships lineage deities at home. Ritual attention to the spirits of deceased uncles and infants ensures their household’s well-being, and each domestic group takes similar care of loved ones who have died. Several members of the Gujar family portrayed here have taken a once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage as far as Haridwar in Uttar Pradesh, Gaya in south-central Bihar, and Puri in eastern Orissa. Mementos of these journeys—such as framed images of the sacred Ganges River’s descent to earth or the central icons from the temple of Puri in Orissa—are placed in their home shrine. Home shrines in general accumulate sacred objects and images eclectically. Images are treasured and are believed to manifest miraculous powers, but images are also understood to be lifeless and dispensable—another reflection of the Hindu genius for seeing both sides.

Worship

Worship, or puja, is the central action of practical Hinduism. Scholars describe Hindu worship as a preeminently transactional event; through worship, humans approach deities by respectful interactions with their powers. At every level, from elaborate temple rituals to simple home practice, worship consists of offerings made and blessings received; reverence is rendered and grace pours down. The purpose of many rituals is to promote auspiciousness (kalyana, mangala, shri)—a pervasive Hindu concept indicating all kinds of good fortune or well-being.

Ritual manuals in vernacular languages offer explicit instructions on exactly what should be offered and declare what benefits may be obtained through specific acts of worship. Benefits may be as general as health and prosperity or as specific as the removal of a particular illness. They also conventionally include rewards after death—thus uniting this-worldly and other-worldly blessings. Devotional songs and statements, however, persistently deny all mechanical views of divine exchanges, insisting that humans have nothing to give, that everything belongs to God, and that no truly religious action should ever be performed instrumentally. Thus, the key tension between external ritual and internal realization that originated in Vedic times and was perpetuated in devotional teachings is sustained in popular present-day ritual action.

One key element in all worship is prasada, translated simply as “blessing” or “grace” and sometimes more literally as “blessed leftovers.” This term refers to the returned portion of a worshiper’s or pilgrim’s offering, which is understood as having value added by the intangible process of a deity’s consumption. Prasada to be used for offerings is hawked by vendors on the road to a temple, but this food does not truly become graced until it has been given as an offering and received back. Many foodstuffs are used as prasada; bananas or other raw fruits and coconuts are particularly common, as are various candies and milk products. Fresh flowers are often included on an offering tray and may also be returned as prasada. Other substances commonly distributed at temples include the water in which icons have been ritually bathed, called charanamrit (“foot nectar”), and the ash from burnt offerings. What all these have in common is contact with the deity’s power in the process of worship and service.

Another important element of temple worship is seeing the deity: darshan. Here again, a two-way but fundamentally unequal flow takes place. An image is always enlivened and given eyes; the worshiper’s delighted gaze at the deity engages the deity’s awareness of the worshiper, and a channel of grace is formed. Sound and scent also alert deities to humans in their presence. Ringing bells, blowing conch shells, singing or playing instrumental music, burning incense, and pouring clarified butter onto smoldering coals are among the activities intended to alert the deity of the devotee’s presence. Worshipers commonly prostrate themselves, symbolically offering respect and their own bodies. A circumambulation of the deity’s altar is another physical mode of engagement with divine power. Hindu worship is accurately described as involving all the senses.

Worship is by no means confined to temples. It may be performed at a home altar, a wayside shrine, or anywhere a devotee decides to mark off a sacred space. Actions at home may be far less elaborate than those at temples, more routinized as part of daily household life, and are performed without priestly expertise. South Indian housewives traditionally turn their thresholds into auspicious altars for the goddess each morning as they draw ritual designs, which are almost instantly trampled back into dust.

Conceptually distinct from worship yet often conflated with it is seva, or service. This refers to regular, respectful attentions to the needs of enshrined deities, or icons (murti). Service in many temples is twice daily or more often. At shrines it may involve bathing an icon, changing its ornaments, ringing bells, and waving lights before it (arati). In temples the person who does seva is normally a ritual expert, regularly present. Although seva is never done with an aim in mind, it is understood to keep the gods beneficently inclined, and flawed seva may cause trouble. Performing seva is good for the soul of the server.

Divination, spirit possession, and healing

Simple practices of divination are common to practical Hinduism. Everyone wants to know: Will my wish be fulfilled? Will my prayer be granted? The answers to such yes-no questions may be revealed by any of a number of practices. Plucking grains between thumb and finger from a pile and counting them to see if they add up to an auspicious number, pressing flowers to the wall and waiting for them to fall, and pouring clarified butter on coals and seeing if a flame rises up are common practices in more than one region of India.

A more elaborate mode of communicating with divine power is possession, in which a human being, male or female, is thought to act as a vehicle for a deity’s mind and voice. This practice is also found in every geographic region where Hinduism flourishes. Although more common to rural areas, it is not absent from urban religion. A possessed priest or priestess is able to provide answers more complex than “yes” or “no.” A medium possessed by a deity may identify certain spirits of the dead who are troubling someone with symptoms of physical and mental illness. Usually these spirits are understood to cause trouble because they are not satisfied with the attention they are getting. The medium will prescribe ritual actions designed to transform the spirit from a source of affliction to a benevolent or neutral power or to send the spirit away. Purely malevolent beings, including jealous “witches” or nameless wandering ghosts, are cajoled, bullied, or even frightened into departure.

Practical Hinduism is greatly concerned with maintaining mental and physical health. Although a possessed priest occasionally forbids resort to doctors and their remedies, in the majority of cases healing rituals operate in conjunction with medicines, injections, and operations. Familial problems are often untangled with the help of a possessed priest in consultations sometimes likened by observers to group therapy.

Women’s religious practices

Women’s rituals comprise an important part of practical Hinduism. Some male-authored Hindu scriptures limit women’s religious roles, consider women more subject than men to bodily impurities, and subordinate them to their fathers and husbands. Priests in temples and other public spaces are predominantly—though not exclusively—male. Most domestic Hindu rituals, however, lie in the hands and hearts of women. Women perform their own seva and puja at permanent or temporary domestic shrines, are the chief ritual experts at many calendrical festivals, and are responsible for many ritual aspects of weddings and other life-cycle celebrations. Women more frequently than men undertake personal vows (vrata)—individually or collectively—to ensure the well-being of their families.

The elements of a vrata usually include a partial fast, simple worship in a domestic space temporarily purified for this purpose, and often the retelling of one or more stories honouring the deities and exemplifying the rewards or describing the origins of the ritual. The event may conclude with the consumption of special food to break the fast. Vows are often associated with calendrical cycles, whether solar, lunar, or both. For example, each day of the week is identified with a particular deity: Monday with Shiva, Tuesday with Hanuman, Wednesday with Ganesha, and so forth. If a woman undertakes a Monday vrata, she will fast and worship Shiva and tell his story every Monday. Or, a person may do an eleventh vrata, a vow for the eleventh day of the lunar calendar, which would come twice a month in the waxing and waning halves of the moon. Some vows are undertaken for the occasional potent convergence of both calendrical systems, such as somavati amavasa, a Monday dark moon.

Women’s ritually performed stories feature heroines who may be devotees of the deity being honoured, daughters of female devotees, or persons ignorant of that particular deity who then learn about its power and blessings in the course of severe tribulations. Notably, the heroines of women’s devotional stories exemplify moral virtues, ritual knowledge, devotional fervour, and transformative agency. The power accumulated by women through their ritual actions should never be used exclusively for their own well-being. Selflessness is a very important virtue that is exemplified by self-denial in fasting. Nonetheless, because women’s well- being is connected to familial well-being, women see their rituals as productive of better circumstances for themselves and their loved ones. For women, practical Hinduism is a space where they express their competence, self-respect, and power and see themselves as protectors of husbands, brothers, and sons. Even while critiquing the ways in which some Hindu traditions disadvantage women, Indian feminists have located important resources for women in goddess worship, in vrata narratives, and in the sense of gender solidarity and self-worth that women’s rituals produce.

Ganges River

Pilgrims bathing in the Ganges River at Haridwar, India. Pilgrimage in Hinduism, as in other religions, is the practice of journeying to sites where religious powers, knowledge, or experience are deemed especially accessible. Hindu pilgrimage is rooted in ancient scriptures. According to textual scholars, the earliest reference to Hindu pilgrimage is in the Rigveda (c. 1500 BCE), in which the “wanderer” is praised. Numerous later texts, including the epic Mahabharata (c. 300 BCE–300 CE) and several of the mythological Puranas (c. 300–750 CE), elaborate on the capacities of particular sacred sites to grant boons, such as health, wealth, progeny, and deliverance after death. Texts enjoin Hindu pilgrims to perform rites on behalf of ancestors and recently deceased kin. Sanskrit sources as well as devotional literature in regional vernacular languages praise certain places and their miraculous capacities.

Pilgrimage has been increasingly popular since the 20th century, facilitated by ever-improving transportation. Movement over actual distance is critical to pilgrimage, for what is important is not just visiting a sacred space but leaving home. Most pilgrimage centres hold periodic religious fairs called melas to mark auspicious astrological moments or important anniversaries. In 2001, for example, the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad was attended during a six-week period by tens of millions of pilgrims.

Because of shared elements in rituals, a pilgrim from western Rajasthan does not feel alienated in the eastern pilgrimage town of Puri, even though the spoken language, the landscape and climate, the deities’ names and appearances, and the food offerings are markedly different from those the pilgrim knows at home. Moreover, pilgrimage works to propagate practices among diverse regions because stories and tales of effective and attractive ritual acts circulate along with pilgrims.

Pilgrimage sites are often located in spots of great natural beauty thought to be pleasing to deities as well as humans. Environmental activists draw on the mythology of the sacred landscapes to inspire Hindu populations to adopt sustainable environmental practices. The Sanskrit and Hindi word for pilgrimage centre is tirtha, literally a river ford or crossing place. The concept of a ford is associated with pilgrimage centres not simply because many are on riverbanks but because they are metaphorically places for transition, either to the other side of particular worldly troubles or beyond the endless cycle of birth and death.

Ann G. Gold

Vasudha Narayanan

Sacrifice and worship

Although the Vedic fire rituals were largely replaced in Puranic and modern Hinduism by image worship and other forms of devotionalism, many Hindu rites can be traced back to Vedism. Certain royal sacrifices—such as the rajasuya, or consecration ritual—remained popular with Hindu kings until modern times. Other large-scale Vedic sacrifices (shrauta) have been regularly maintained from ancient times to the present by certain families and groups of Brahmans. The surviving rituals from the Vedic period, however, tend to be observed at the level of the domestic (grihya) ritual.

Domestic rites

The Vedic householder was expected to maintain a domestic fire into which he made his offerings. Normally he did this himself, but in many cases he employed a Brahman officiant. In the course of time, the family priest was given a large part in these ceremonies, so that most Hindus have employed Brahmans for the administration of the “sacraments” (samskaras). The samskaras include all important life-cycle events, from conception to cremation, and are the main constituents of the domestic ritual.

Samskaras: rites of passage

The samskaras are transitional rites intended to prepare a person for a certain event or for the next stage in life by removing taints (sins) or by generating fresh qualities. If the blemishes incurred in this or a previous life are not removed, the person is impure and will not be rewarded for any ritual acts. The samskaras sanctify critical moments and are deemed necessary for unfolding a person’s latent capacities for development.

In antiquity there was a great divergence of opinion about the number of rites of passage, but in later times 16 were recognized as most important. In modern times most samskaras—except those of prenatal initiation, marriage, and death—have fallen into disuse or are performed in an abridged or simplified form without Vedic mantras or a priest.

Prenatal rites such as the punsavana (begetting of a son), which is observed in the third month of pregnancy, are still popular. The birth is itself the subject of elaborate ceremonies, the main features of which are an oblation of ghee (clarified butter) cast into the fire; the introduction of a pellet of honey and ghee into the newborn child’s mouth, which according to many authorities is an act intended to produce mental and physical strength; the murmuring of mantras for the sake of a long life; and rites to counteract inauspicious influences. There is much divergence of opinion as to the time of the name-giving ceremony; in addition to the personal name, there is often another one that should be kept secret for fear of sinister designs against the child. The defining moment comes, however, when the father, the mother, or a family elder utters the name into the child’s ear.

A hallmark of childhood samskaras is a general male bias. In the birth ritual (jatakarman), the manuals direct the father to breathe upon the child’s head, a practice transparently designed to supplant the role that biology gives to the mother. In practice, however, the mother may join in this breathing ritual.

There is also an array of regional life-cycle rites that focuses specifically upon the lives of girls and women. In some communities in southern India, for instance, one finds an initiation rite (vilakkitu kalyanam) that corresponds roughly to upanayana, the male initiation, and that gives girls the authority to light oil lamps and thereby to become full participants in proper domestic worship. Other rites celebrate first menstruation or mark various moments surrounding childbirth. Typically women act as officiants.

The important upanayana initiation was traditionally held when a boy was between the ages of 8 and 12, and it marked his entry into the community of the three higher classes of society; in contemporary Hinduism this can be done at any time before his wedding. In this rite he becomes a “twice-born one,” or dvija. Traditionally, this was also the beginning of a long period of Veda study and education in the house under the guidance of a teacher (guru). In modern practice, the haircutting ceremony—formerly performed in a boy’s third year—and the initiation are usually performed on the same day, the homecoming ceremony at the end of the period of study being little more than a formality.

Wedding ceremonies, the most important of all, not only have remained elaborate—and often very expensive—but also have incorporated various elements—among others, propitiations and expiations—that are not indicated in the oldest sources. Already in ancient times there existed great divergences in accordance with local customs or family or caste traditions. However, the following practices are considered essential in the performance of the wedding rite in most communities. The date is fixed only after careful astrological calculation; the bridegroom is conducted to the home of his future parents-in-law, who receive him as an honoured guest; there are offerings of roasted grain into the fire; the bridegroom has to take hold of the bride’s hand; he conducts her around the sacrificial fire; seven steps are taken by bride and bridegroom to solemnize the irrevocability of the unity; and both are, in procession, conducted to their new home, which the bride enters without touching the threshold. The fire is considered to be the “eternal witness,” and texts on dharma insist upon the essential nature of the fire in Hindu weddings. However, it is not used in the wedding ceremonies of many communities in Kerala and among Coorgi Hindus.

Of eight forms of marriage recognized by the ancient authorities, two have remained in vogue: the simple gift of a bride and the legalization of the alliance by means of a marriage gift paid to the bride’s family. In the Vedic period, girls seem not to have married before they had reached puberty. Child marriage and the condemnation of the remarriage of widows, especially among the higher classes, became customary later and have gradually, since the mid-19th century, lost their stringency.

There are many variations of other types of rituals as well. For example, the traditional funeral method is cremation. Burial is reserved for those who have not been sufficiently purified by samskaras (i.e., children) and those who no longer need the ritual fire to be conveyed to the hereafter, such as ascetics who have renounced all earthly concerns. Members of the Lingayat (also called Virashaiva) community, however, do not practice cremation but instead bury their dead.

An important and meritorious complement of the funeral offices is the shraddha ceremony, in which food is offered to Brahmans for the benefit of the deceased. Many people still perform this rite at least once a year, even when they no longer engage in any of the five obligatory daily offerings discussed below.

Daily offerings

There are five obligatory offerings: (1) offerings to the gods (food taken from the meal), (2) a cursory offering (bali) made to “all beings,” (3) a libation of water mixed with sesame offered to the spirits of the deceased, (4) hospitality, and (5) recitation of the Vedas. Although some traditions prescribe a definite ritual in which these five “sacrifices” are performed, this has remained more of an ideal than a practice. In most cases the five daily offerings are merely a way of speaking about one’s religious obligations in general.

Other private rites

The morning and evening adorations (sandhya), being a very important duty of the traditional householder, are mainly Vedic in character but have become lengthy because of the addition of Puranic and Tantric elements. If not shortened, the morning ceremonies consist of self-purification, bathing, prayers, and recitation of mantras, especially the Gayatri-mantra (Rigveda 3.62.10), a prayer for spiritual stimulation addressed to the Sun. The accompanying ritual includes (1) the application of marks on the forehead, characterizing the adherents of a particular religious community, (2) the presentation of offerings (water, flowers) to the Sun, and (3) meditative concentration. There are Shaiva and Vaishnava variants, and some elements are optional. The observance of the daily obligations, including the care of bodily purity and professional duties, leads to earthly reward and helps to preserve the state of sanctity required to enter into contact with the divine.

Shiva temple, Bhumara.

Image worship in sectarian Hinduism takes place both in small household shrines and in the temple. Many Hindu authorities claim that regular temple worship to one of the deities of the devotional communities procures the same results for the worshiper as did the performance of one of the great Vedic sacrifices, and one who provides the patronage for the construction of a temple is called a “sacrificer” (yajamana).

Building a temple, which belongs to whoever paid for it or to the community that occupies it, is believed to be a meritorious deed recommended to anyone desirous of heavenly reward. The choice of a site, which should be serene and lovely, is determined by astrology and divination as well as by its proximity to human dwellings. The size and artistic value of temples range widely, from small village shrines with simple statuettes to great temple-cities whose boundary walls, pierced by monumental gates (gopura), enclose various buildings, courtyards, pools for ceremonial bathing, and sometimes even schools, hospitals, and monasteries.

Temple services, which may be held by any qualified member of the community, are neither collective nor carried out at fixed times. The rituals of temple worship are frequently performed by male Brahmans. Those present experience, as spectators, the fortifying and beneficial influence radiating from the sacred acts. Sometimes worshipers assemble to meditate, to take part in chanting, or to listen to an exposition of doctrine. The puja (worship) performed in public “for the well-being of the world” is, though sometimes more elaborate, largely identical with that executed for personal interest. There are, however, many regional differences and even significant variations within the same community.

Shaiva rites

Ascetic tendencies were much in evidence among the Pashupatas, the oldest Shaiva tradition in northern India. Their Yoga, consisting of a constant meditative contact with God in solitude, required that they frequent places for cremating bodies. One group that emerged out of the Pashupata sect carried human skulls (hence the name Kapalikas, from kapala, “skull”). The Kapalikas used the skulls as bowls for liquor into which they projected and worshipped Shiva as Kapalika, the “Skull Bearer,” or Bhairava, the “Frightful One,” and then drank to become intoxicated. Their belief was that an ostentatious indifference to anything worldly was the best method of severing the ties of samsara.

The view and way of life peculiar to the Virashaivas, or Lingayats (“Lingam-Wearers”), in southwestern India is characterized by a deviation from common Hindu traditions and institutions such as sacrificial rites, temple worship, pilgrimages, child marriages, and inequality of the sexes. Initiation (diksha) is, on the other hand, an obligation laid on every member of the community. The spiritual power of the guru is bestowed upon the newborn and converts, who receive the eightfold shield (which protects devotees from ignorance of the supremacy of God and guides them to final beatitude) and the lingam. The miniature lingam, the centre and basis of all their religious practices and observances, which they always bear on their body, is held to be God himself concretely represented. Worship is due it twice or three times a day. When a Lingayat “is absorbed into the lingam” (i.e., dies), his body is not cremated, as is customary in Hinduism, but is interred, like ascetics of other groups. Lingayats who have reached a certain level of holiness are believed to die in the state of emancipation.

Shaivism, though inclined in doctrinal matters to inclusiveness, inculcates some fundamental lines of conduct: one should worship one’s spiritual preceptor (guru) as God himself, follow his path, consider him to be present in oneself, and dissociate oneself from all opinions and practices that are incompatible with the Shaiva creed. Yet some of Shiva’s devotees also worship other gods, and the “Shaivization” of various ancient traditions is sometimes rather superficial.

Like many other Indian religions, the Shaiva-siddhanta has developed an elaborate system of ethical philosophy, primarily with a view to preparing the way for those who aspire to liberation. Because dharma leads to happiness, there is no distinction between sacred and secular duties. All deeds are performed as services to God and with the conviction that all life is sacred and God-centred. A devout way of living and meditative devotion are thus much recommended. Kashmir Shaivism developed the practice of a simple method of salvation: by the recognition (pratyabhijna)—direct, spontaneous, technique-free, but full of bhakti—of one’s identity with God.

Vaishnava rites

According to tradition, the faithful Shrivaishnava Brahman arranges his day around five pursuits: purificatory rites, collecting the requisites for worship, acts of worship, study and contemplation of the meaning of the sacred books, and meditative concentration on the Lord’s image. However, these pursuits have always been treated as an ideal. Lifelong obligations include the performance of sacrifices and other rites, recitation of the thousand names of Vishnu, acts of worship at home and in the temple, recitation of the scriptures, and visits to sacred places. Ramanuja, the great theologian and philosopher of the 12th century, recommended, in addition to these practices, concentration on God, a virtuous way of living, and a dispassionate attitude to success and misfortune. According to Madhva (c. 1199–c. 1278), faithful observance of all regulations of daily conduct will contribute to eventual success in the quest for liberation. Devout Vaishnavas emphasize God’s omnipotence and the far-reaching effects of his grace. They attach much value to the repetition of his name or of sacred formulas (japa) and to the praise and commemoration of his deeds as a means of self-realization and of unification with his essence. Special stress is laid on ahimsa (“noninjury”), the practice of not killing or not causing injury to living creatures.

Holi

Children celebrating the festival of Holi, Kolkata (Calcutta). Hindu festivals are combinations of religious ceremonies, semi-ritual spectacles, worship, prayer, lustrations, processions, music and dances, eating, drinking, lovemaking, licentiousness, feeding the poor, and other activities of a religious or traditional character. The original purpose of these activities was to purify, avert malicious influences, renew society, bridge over critical moments, and stimulate or resuscitate the vital powers of nature (hence the term utsava, meaning both the generation of power and a festival). Because Hindu festivals relate to the cyclical life of nature, they are supposed to prevent it from stagnating. These cyclic festivals—which may last for many days—continue to be celebrated throughout India.

Holi: Explaining the Festival of Colors

Holi is perhaps the most colorful day of the year.See all videos for this article Such festivals refresh the mood of the participants, further the consciousness of their own power, and help to compensate for their sensations of fear and vulnerability concerning the forces of nature. Such mixtures of worship and pleasure require the participation of the entire community and create harmony among its members, even if not all contemporary participants are aware of the festival’s original character. There are also innumerable festivities in honour of specific gods, celebrated by individual temples, villages, and religious communities.

An important festival, formerly celebrating Kama, the god of love, survives in the Holi, a festival connected with the spring equinox and in western India with the wheat harvest. Although commemorated primarily in northern India, the rituals associated with Holi vary regionally. Among the Marathas, a people who live along the west coast of India from Mumbai (Bombay) to Goa, the descendants of heroes who died on the battlefield perform a dance, sword in hand, in honour of their ancestors until they believe themselves possessed by the spirits of the heroes. In Bengal swings are made for Krishna; in other regions a bonfire is also essential. The tradition that accounts for the festival of Holi describes how young Prahlada, in spite of his demonic father’s opposition, worshipped Vishnu and was carried into the fire by the female demon Holika, the embodiment of evil, who was believed to be immune to the ravages of fire. Through Vishnu’s intervention, Prahlada emerged unharmed, while Holika was burned to ashes. The bonfires are intended to commemorate this event or rather to reiterate the triumph of virtue and religion over evil and sacrilege. This explains why objects representing the sickness and impurities of the past year—the new year begins immediately after Holi—are thrown into the bonfire, and it is considered inauspicious not to look at it. Moreover, people pay or forgive debts, reconcile quarrels, and try to rid themselves of the evils, conflicts, and impurities they have accumulated during the preceding months, translating the central conception of the festival into a justification for dealing anew with continuing situations in their lives.

The name Diwali comes from the Sanskrit word dipavali, which means “row of lights.”

Hindus celebrate a number of other important festivals, including Diwali, in which all classes of society participate. It takes place in October or November and features worship and ceremonial lights in honour of Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and good fortune; fireworks to commemorate the victory of Krishna over Narakasura, the demon of hell; and gambling, an old ritual custom intended to secure luck for the coming year. The nine-day Durga festival, or Navratri, celebrated in September or October, is, especially in Bengal, a splendid homage to the goddess; in North India it is a celebration of Rama’s victory over Ravana.

Social structure

The caste system, which has organized Indian society for millennia, is thoroughly legitimated by and intertwined with Hindu religious doctrine and practice. Although primarily connected with the Hindu tradition, the caste system is also present in some measure among Jains, Sikhs, and Christians in South Asia.

Four social classes, or varnas—Brahmans, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and Shudras—provide the simplified structure for the enormously complicated system of thousands of castes and subcastes. According to a passage from the Purusha hymn (Rigveda 10.90), the Brahman was the Purusha’s mouth, the Kshatriya his arms, the Vaishya his thighs, and the Shudra his feet. This depiction of the Purusha, or cosmic man, gives an idea of the functions and mutual relations of the four main social classes.

The three main classes in the classic division of Indian society are the Brahmans, the warriors, and the commoners. The Brahmans, whatever their worldly avocations, claim to have by virtue of their birth the authority to teach the Veda, perform ritual sacrifices for others, and accept gifts and subsistence. The term alms is misleading; the dakshina offered at the end of a rite to a Brahman officiant is not a fee but an oblation through which the rite is made complete. Brahmans are held to be the highest among the castes because of their sanctification through the samskaras (rites of passage) and their observance of restrictive rules. The main duty of the nobility (the Kshatriyas) is to protect the people and that of the commoners (the Vaishyas) is to tend cattle, to trade, and to cultivate land. Even if a king (theoretically of Kshatriya descent) was not of noble descent, he was still clothed with divine authority as an upholder of dharma. He was consecrated by means of a complex and highly significant ritual; he was Indra and other gods (deva) incarnate. The emblems or paraphernalia of his office represent sovereign authority: the white umbrella of state, for example, is the residence of Shri-Lakshmi, the goddess of fortune. All three higher classes had to sacrifice and had to study the Veda, although the responsibilities of the Vaishyas in sacred matters were less demanding.

According to the texts on dharma, the duty of the fourth class (the Shudras) was to serve the others. According to Hindu tradition, the Veda should not be studied in the presence of Shudras, but they may listen to the recitation of epics and Puranas. They are permitted to perform the five main acts of worship (without Vedic mantras) and undertake observances, but even today they maintain various ceremonies of their own, carried out without Brahmanic assistance. Yet despite the statements in the texts on dharma, there was considerable fluidity in the status of the castes. Communities such as the Vellalas, for instance, are regarded as Shudras by Brahmans but as a high caste by other groups.

Accordingly, a distinction is often made among Shudras. Some are considered to be purer and to have a more correct behaviour and way of living than others—the former tending to assimilate with higher castes and the latter to rank with the lowest in the social scale, who, often called Chandalas, were at an early date charged with sweeping, bearing corpses, and other impure occupations. Ritual purity was and is an important criterion; impure conduct and neglect of Veda study and the rules regarding forbidden food might suffice to stigmatize the “twice-born” as a Shudra. On the other hand, in later times the trend of many communities has been toward integrating all Shudras into the Brahmanic system. The Brahmans, who have far into modern times remained a respected, traditional, and sometimes intellectual upper class, were much in demand because of their knowledge of rites and traditions. Although Kshatriya rank is claimed by many whose title is one of function or creation rather than of inheritance, this class is now rare in many regions. Moreover, for a considerable time none of the four varnas represented anything other than a series of hierarchically arranged groups of castes.

Castes

The origin of the caste system is not known with certainty. Hindus maintain that the proliferation of the castes (jatis, literally “births”) was the result of intermarriage (which is prohibited in Hindu works on dharma), which led to the subdivision of the four classes, or varnas. Modern theorists, however, assume that castes arose from differences in family ritual practices, racial distinctions, and occupational differentiation and specialization. Scholars also doubt whether the simple varna system was ever more than a theoretical socioreligious ideal and have emphasized that the highly complex division of Hindu society into nearly 3,000 castes and subcastes was probably in place even in ancient times.

In general, a caste is an endogamous hereditary group of families bearing a common name, often claiming a common descent, as a rule professing to follow the same hereditary calling, adhering to the same customs—especially regarding purity, meals, and marriages—and often further divided into smaller endogamous circles. Moreover, tribes, guilds, or religious communities characterized by particular customs—for example, the Lingayats—could easily be regarded as castes. The status of castes varies in different localities. Although social mobility is possible, the mutual relationship of castes is hierarchically determined: local Brahman groups occupy the highest place, and differences in ritual purity are the main criteria of position in the hierarchy. Most impure are the so-called “untouchables,” officially designated as Scheduled Castes in the constitution of modern India. Many Scheduled Caste groups now prefer the name Dalit (“Crushed” or “Oppressed”). Among the Scheduled Castes, however, there are numerous subdivisions, each of which regards itself as superior to others.

Traditional Hindus maintain that the ritual impurity and “untouchability” inherent in these groups does not essentially differ from that temporarily associated with mourners or menstruating women. This, and the fact that some exterior group or other might rise in estimation and become an interior one or that individual outcastes might be well-to-do, does not alter the fact that there was social discrimination. The Scheduled Castes were subjected to various socioreligious disabilities before mitigating tendencies helped bring about reform. After independence, social discrimination was prohibited, and the practice of preventing access to religious, occupational, or civil rights on the grounds of untouchability was made a punishable offense. Despite these prohibitions, Scheduled Castes were sometimes barred from the use of temples and other religious institutions and from public schools.

From the traditional Hindu point of view, this social system is the necessary complement of the principles of dharma, karma, and samsara. Corresponding to hells and heavenly regions in the hereafter, the castes are the mundane social frame within which karma is manifested and worked out.

Social protest

For many centuries certain Indian religious communities have been dedicated in whole or in part to the elimination of caste discrimination. Many have been guided by bhakti sentiments, including the Virashaivas, Sikhs, Kabir Panthis, Satnamis, and Ramnamis, all of whom bear a complicated relation to the greater Hindu fold. A major theme in bhakti poetry throughout India has been the ridicule of caste and the etiquette of ritual purity that relates to it. In North India this element is stronger among the bhakti poets who accept the concept of nirguna, which holds that brahman is to be characterized as without qualities, than among the poets who advocate the idea of saguna, which maintains that brahman possesses qualities. This tendency is not evident among bhakti poets of South India.

Other religions have provided members of low-ranked castes with a further hope for escaping social hierarchies associated with Hindu practice. Sikhism has traditionally rejected caste, a position clearly emphasized in the gurdwaras, where access to sacred scripture, the Adi Granth, is granted without regard to caste and communal meals are served to all Sikhs. Nevertheless, some practices associated with the castes were retained. Islam also offered hope to low-ranked castes in Kerala from the 8th century onward and elsewhere in India from the 12th century, but some convert groups retained their original caste organization even after embracing Islam. Christianity exercised a similar force, serving for centuries as a magnet for disadvantaged Hindus, but to a large extent converts continue to identify themselves in terms of their original Hindu castes. In 1956 B.R. Ambedkar, the principal framer of the Indian constitution and a member of the scheduled Mahar caste, abandoned Hinduism for Buddhism, and millions of his lower-caste followers eventually also converted to Buddhism. Yet many Ambedkarite Dalits continue to venerate saints such as Kabir, Chokhamela, and Ravidas, who figure in the general lore of Hindu bhakti. Other Dalits, especially members of the Chamar caste (traditionally leather workers), have gone further, identifying themselves explicitly as Ravidasis, creating a scripture that features his poetry and building temples that house his image. Still other Dalit communities have claimed since the early 20th century that they represent India’s original religion (adi dharma), rejecting caste-coded Vedic beliefs and practices.

Renunciants and the rejection of social order

Another means of rejecting the social order, which forms the background for significant portions of Hindu belief and practice, is renunciation (self-denial and asceticism). The rituals of sannyasa, which serve as a gateway to a life of religious discipline, often mimic death rituals, signifying the renouncer’s understanding that he (or, less typically, she) no longer occupies a place in family or society. Other rituals serve to induct the initiate into a new family—the alternative family provided by a celibate religious order, usually focused on a guru. In principle this family should not be structured along the lines of caste, and the initiate should pledge to renounce dietary restrictions. In practice, however, some dietary restrictions remain in India’s most influential renunciant communities (though not in all), and some renunciant orders are closely paired with specific communities of householders. This follows a pattern that is loosely present everywhere. Householders and renunciants offer each other mutual benefits, with the former dispensing material substance to the theoretically propertyless holy men and women while the latter dispense religious merit and spiritual guidance in return. Such an enactment of the values of dharma and moksha is symbiotic to be sure, but that does not serve to domesticate renunciants entirely. Their existence questions the ultimacy of anything tied to caste, hierarchy, and bodily well-being.

Religious orders and holy men

Members of the various denominations who abandon all worldly attachment enter an “inner circle” or “order” that, seeking a life of devotion, adopts or develops particular vows and observances, a common cult, and some form of initiation.

Initiation

Hindus are free to join a religious order and must submit to its rites and way of living after joining it. The initiation (diksha), a rite of purification or consecration involving the transformation of the aspirant’s personality, is regarded as a complement to, or even a substitute for, the previous initiation ceremony (the upanayana that all twice-born Hindus undergo at adolescence), which it strikingly resembles. Such religious groups integrate ancient, widespread ideas and customs of initiation into the framework of either the Vaishnava or Shaiva patterns of Hinduism.

Vaishnavism emphasizes their character as an introduction to a life of devotion and as an entrance into closer contact with God, although happiness, knowledge, a long life, and a prospect of freedom from karma are also among the ideals to which they aspire. Shaivas are convinced of the absolute necessity of initiation for anyone desiring final liberation and require an initiation in accordance with their rituals. All communities agree that the authority to initiate belongs only to a qualified spiritual guide (guru), usually a Brahman, who has previously received the special guru-diksha (initiation as a teacher) and is often regarded as representing God himself. The postulant is sometimes given instruction in the esoteric meaning of the scriptures. The initiate receives a devotional name and is given the sacred mantras of the community.

There are many complicated forms of initiation: the Vaishnavas differentiate between the members of the four classes; the Shaivas and Tantrists take into account the natural aptitude and competency of the recipients and distinguish between first-grade initiates, who are believed to obtain access to God, and higher-grade initiates, who remain in a state of holiness.

Yoga

The initiate guided by a guru may practice Yoga (a “methodic exertion” of body and mind) in order to attain, through mortification, concentration, and meditation, a higher state of consciousness and thereby find supreme knowledge, achieve spiritual autonomy, and realize oneness with the Highest (or however the ultimate goal is conceived). Yoga may be atheistic or theistic and may adopt various philosophical or religious principles. Every denomination attempted to implement Yogic practices on a theoretical basis derived from its own teachings. There are many different forms of Yoga, and the practices vary according to the stage of advancement of the adepts. All serious yogis, however, agree in disapproving the use of Yogic methods for worldly purposes.

a sadhu

The typical Hindu ascetic (sadhu) usually wears a distinctive mark (pundra) on his forehead and often carries some symbol of his religion. A Vaishnava might possess a discus (chakra) and a conch shell (sankha), replicas of Vishnu’s flaming weapon and his instrument of beneficent power and omnipresent protection, or a shalagrama stone or a tulsi plant, which represent, respectively, Vishnu’s essence and that of his spouse Lakshmi. A Shaiva might impersonate Shiva and carry a trident (trishula), denoting empire and the irresistible force of transcendental reality; wear a small lingam; carry a human skull, showing that he is beyond the terror inspired by the transitoriness of the world; or smear his body with apotropaic (supposed to avert evil) and consecratory ashes. These emblems are sacred objects of worship because the divine presence, when invoked by mantras, is felt to be in them.

Brian K. Smith

Vasudha Narayanan

Cultural expressions: visual arts, theatre, and dance

The structure of Indian temples, the outward form of images, and indeed the very character of Indian art are largely determined by the religion and unique worldview of India, which penetrated the other provinces of culture and welded them into a homogeneous whole. Moreover, the art that emerged is highly symbolic. The much-developed ritual-religious symbolism presupposes the existence of a spiritual reality that may make its presence and influence felt in the material world and can also be approached through its representative symbols.

The production of objects of symbolic value is therefore more than a technique. The artisan can begin work only after entering into a state of supranormal consciousness and must model a devotional image after the ideal prototype. After undergoing a process of spiritual transformation, the artisan is believed to transform the material used to create the image into a receptacle of divine power. Like the artisan, the worshiper (sadhaka, “the one who wishes to attain the goal”), must grasp the esoteric meaning of a statue, picture, or pot and identify his or her self with the power residing in it. The usual offering, a handful of flowers, is the means to convey the worshiper’s “life-breath” into the image.

Types of symbols

If they know how to handle the symbols, the worshipers have at their disposal an instrument for utilizing the possibilities lying in the depths of their own subconscious as well as a key to the mysteries of the forces dominating the world.

Yantra and mandala

The general term for an “instrument [for controlling]” is yantra, which is especially applied to ritual diagrams but can also be applied to devotional images, pictures, and other such aids to worship. Any yantra represents some aspect of the divine and enables devotees to worship it immediately within their hearts while identifying themselves with it. Except in its greater complexity, a mandala does not differ from a yantra, and both are drawn during a highly complex ritual in a purified and ritually consecrated place. The meaning and the use of both are similar, and they may be permanent or provisional. A mandala, delineating a consecrated place and protecting it against disintegrating forces represented in demoniac cycles, is the geometric projection of the universe, spatially and temporally reduced to its essential plan. It represents in a schematic form the whole drama of disintegration and reintegration, and the adept can use it to identify with the forces governing these. As in temple ritual, a vase is employed to receive the divine power so that it can be projected into the drawing and then into the person of the adept. Thus, the mandala becomes a support for meditation, an instrument to provoke visions of the unseen.

A good example of a mandala is the shrichakra, the “Wheel of Shri” (i.e., of God’s shakti), which is composed of four isosceles triangles with the apices upward, symbolizing Shiva, and five isosceles triangles with the apices downward, symbolizing Shakti. The nine triangles are of various sizes and intersect with one another. In the middle is the power point (bindu), visualizing the highest, the invisible, elusive centre from which the entire figure and the cosmos expand. The triangles are enclosed by two rows of (8 and 16) petals, representing the lotus of creation and reproductive vital force. The broken lines of the outer frame denote the figure to be a sanctuary with four openings to the regions of the universe.

Another kind of mandala is seen in the grid drawn on a site where a temple is to be built. Here, the “spiritual” foundation is provided by a yantra, called the mandala of the Vastu Purusha (spirit) of the site, that is also drawn on the site on which a temple is built. This rite is a reenactment of a variant of the myth of the Vastu Purusha, an immortal primeval being who obstructed both worlds until he was subdued by the gods; the parts of his body became the spirits of the site.

Lingam and yoni

One of the most common objects of worship, whether in temples or in household worship, is the lingam, a symbol of Shiva. Often much stylized and representing the cosmic pillar, it emanates its all-producing energy to the four quarters of the universe. As the symbol of male creative energy, it is frequently combined with its female counterpart, the yoni, the latter forming the base from which the lingam rises. Although the lingam originally may have had no relation to Shiva, it has from ancient times been regarded as symbolizing Shiva’s creative energy and is widely worshipped as his fundamental form.

Vishnu

Vishnu on the serpent Shesha, Badami, India. The beauty of votary objects is believed to contribute to their power as sacred instruments, and their ornamentation is held to facilitate the process of inviting the divine power into them. Statues of gods are not intended to imitate ideal human forms but to express the supernatural. A divine figure is a “likeness” (pratima), a temporary benevolent or terrifying expression of some aspect of a god’s nature. Iconographic handbooks attach great importance to the ideology behind images and reveal, for example, that Vishnu’s eight arms stand for the four cardinal and intermediate points of the compass. A deity’s four faces may illustrate the concept of God’s fourfoldness, typifying his strength, knowledge, lordship, and potency. The emblems express the qualities of their bearers—e.g., a deadly weapon symbolizes the forces used to destroy evil, and many-headedness symbolizes omniscience. Much use is made of gestures (mudras); for example, the raised right hand, in the “fear-not” gesture (abhaya-mudra), bestows protection. Every iconographic detail has its own symbolic value, helping devotees to direct their energy to a deeper understanding of the various aspects of the divine and to proceed from external to internal worship. For many Indians, a consecrated image is a container of concentrated divine energy, and Hindu theists maintain that it is a form taken by the deity to make himself accessible to the devotee.

Religious principles in sculpture and painting

Like literature and the performing arts, the visual arts contributed to the perpetuation of myths. Images sustain the presence of the god: when Devi is shown seated on her lion, advancing against the buffalo demon, she represents the affirmative forces of the universe and the triumph of divine power over wickedness. Male and female figures in uninterrupted embrace, as in Shaiva iconography, signify the union of opposites and the eternal process of generation. In Hindu sculpture the tendency is toward hieratic poses of a god in a particular conventional stance (murti; image), which, once fixed, perpetuates itself. An icon is a frozen incident of a myth. For example, one murti of Shiva is the “destruction of the elephant,” in which Shiva appears dancing before and below a bloody elephant skin that he holds up before the image of his consort; the stance is the summary of his triumph over the elephant demon. A god may also appear in a characteristic pose while holding in his multitudinous hands his various emblems, on each of which hangs a story. Lovers sculpted on temples are auspicious symbols on a par with foliage, water jars, and other representatives of fertility. Carvings, such as those that appear on temple chariots, tend to be more narrative; even more so are the miniature paintings of the Middle Ages. A favourite theme in the latter is the myth of the cowherd god Krishna and his love of the cowherdesses (gopis).

Lakshmana temple

Lakshmana temple, Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh, India. Temples must be erected on sites that are shubha—i.e., suitable, beautiful, auspicious, and near water—because it is thought that the gods will not come to other places. However, temples are not necessarily designed to be congenial to their surroundings, because a manifestation of the sacred is an irruption, a break in phenomenal continuity. Temples are understood to be visible representations of a cosmic pillar, and their sites are said to be navels of the world and are believed to ensure communication with the gods. Their outward appearance must raise the expectation of meeting with God. Their erection is a reconstruction and reintegration of Purusha-Prajapati, enabling him to continue his creative activity, and the finished monuments are symbols of the universe that is the unfolded One. The owner of the temple (i.e., the individual or community that paid for its construction)—also called the sacrificer—participates in the process of reintegration and experiences his spiritual rebirth in the small cella, aptly called the “womb room” (garbhagriha), by meditating on the God’s presence, symbolized or actualized in his consecrated image. The cella is in the centre of the temple above the navel—i.e., the foundation stone—and it may contain a jar filled with the creative power (shakti) that is identified with the goddess Earth (who bears and protects the monument), three lotus flowers, and three tortoises (of stone, silver, and gold) that represent earth, atmosphere, and heaven. The tortoise is a manifestation of Vishnu bearing Mount Mandara, sometimes thought to be the cosmic pillar; the lotus is the symbol of the expansion of generative possibilities. The vertical axis or tube, coinciding with the cosmic pillar, connects all parts of the building and is continued in the finial on the top; it corresponds to the mystical vertical vein in the body of the worshiper through which his soul rises to unite itself with the Highest.

The designing of Hindu temples, like that of religious images, was codified in the Shilpa-shastras (craft textbooks), and every aspect of the design was believed to offer the symbolic representation of some feature of the cosmos. The idea of microcosmic symbolism is strong in Hinduism and comes from Vedic times; the Brahmanas are replete with similar cosmic interpretations of the many features of the sacrifice. The Vedic idea of the correspondence (bandhu) between microcosm and macrocosm was applied to the medieval temple, which was laid out geometrically to mirror the structure of the universe, with its four geometric quarters and a celestial roof. The temple also represents the mountain at the navel of the world and often somewhat resembles a mountain. On the periphery were carved the most worldly and diverse images, including battles, hunts, circuses, animals, birds, and gods.

Lakshmana temple

Detail of a wall of the Lakshmana temple at Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh, India, c. 941. The erotic scenes carved at Khajuraho in Madhya Pradesh and Konarak in Orissa express a general exuberance that may be an offering of thanksgiving to the gods who created all. However, that same swarming luxuriance of life may also reflect the concern that one must set aside worldly temptations before entering the sacred space of the temple, for the carvings decorate only the outside of the temple; at the centre, the sanctum sanctorum, there is little if any ornamentation, except for symbols of the god or goddess. Thus, these carvings simultaneously express a celebration of samsara and a movement toward moksha.

Theatre and dance

Theatrical performances are events that can be used to secure blessings and happiness; the element of recreation is indissolubly blended with edification and spiritual elevation. The structure and character of classical Indian drama reveal its origin and function: it developed from a magico-religious ceremony, which survives as a ritual introduction, and begins and closes with benedictions. Drama is produced for festive occasions with a view to spiritual and religious success (siddhi), which must also be prompted by appropriate behaviour from the spectators; there must be a happy ending; the themes are borrowed from epic and legendary history; the development and unraveling of the plot are retarded; and the envy of malign influences is averted by the almost obligatory buffoon (vidusaka, “the spoiler”). There are also, in addition to films, which often use the same religious and mythic themes, yatras, a combination of stage play and various festivities that have contributed much to the spread of the Puranic view of life.

Dancing is not only an aesthetic pursuit but also a divine service. The dance executed by Shiva as king of dancers (Nataraja), the visible symbol of the rhythm of the universe, represents God’s five activities: he unfolds the universe out of the drum held in one of his right hands; he preserves it by uplifting his other right hand in abhaya-mudra; he reabsorbs it with his upper left hand, which bears a tongue of flame; his transcendental essence is hidden behind the garb of apparitions, and grace is bestowed and release made visible by the foot that is held aloft and to which the hands are made to point; and the other foot, planted on the ground, gives an abode to the tired souls struggling in samsara. Another dance pose adopted by Shiva is the doomsday tandava, executed in his destructive Bhairava manifestation, usually with 10 arms and accompanied by Devi and a horde of other beings. The related myth is that Shiva conquered a mighty elephant demon whom he forced to dance until he fell dead; then, wrapped in the blood-dripping skin of his victim, the god executed a dance of victory.

There are halls for sacred dances annexed to some temples because of this association with the divine. The rhythmic movement has a compelling force, generating and concentrating power or releasing superfluous energy. It induces the experience of the divine and transforms the dancer into whatever he or she impersonates. Thus, many tribal dances consist of symbolic enactments of events (harvest, battles) in the hope that they will be accomplished successfully. Musicians and dancers accompany processions to expel the demons of cholera or cattle plague. Even today religious themes and the various relations between humans and God are danced and made visual by the codified symbolic meanings of gestures and movements (see South Asian Arts: Dance and theatre).

Arthur Llewellyn Basham

J.A.B. van Buitenen

Wendy Doniger

Vasudha Narayanan

Hinduism and religions of Indian origin

Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism emerged from the same milieu: the circles of world renouncers of the 6th century BCE. All share common non-Vedic practices (such as renunciation itself and various Yogic meditational techniques) and doctrines (such as the belief in rebirth and the goal of liberation from perpetual transmigration), but Buddhists and Jains do not accept the authority of the Vedic tradition and therefore, with some exceptions, are regarded as less than orthodox by Hindus. From the 6th to the 11th century there was strong competition for royal patronage between the three communities—with Brahmans representing Hindu values—as well as between Vaishnavas and Shaivas. In general, the Brahman groups prevailed. In a typically absorptive gesture, Hindus in time recognized the Buddha as an incarnation of Vishnu, usually the ninth. However, it was sometimes held that Vishnu assumed this form to mislead and destroy the enemies of the Veda. Hence, the Buddha avatar is rarely worshipped by Hindus, though it is often highly respected by them. At an institutional level, certain Buddhist shrines, such as the one marking the Buddha’s enlightenment at Bodh Gaya, have remained partly under the supervision of Hindu ascetics and are visited by Hindu pilgrims.

Hinduism has much in common with Jainism, which until the 20th century remained an Indian religion, especially in social institutions and ritual life; for this reason, many Hindus still consider it a Hindu sect. The points of difference—e.g., a stricter practice of ahimsa (“noninjury”) and the absence of sacrifices for the deceased in Jainism—do not give offense to orthodox Hindus. Moreover, many Jain laypeople worship images as Hindus do, though with a different rationale. There are even places outside India where Hindus and Jains have joined to build a single temple, sharing the worship space.

Hinduism and Islam

Hindu relations with Islam and Christianity are in some ways quite different from the ties and tensions that bind together religions of Indian origin. Hindus live with a legacy of domination by Muslim and Christian rulers that stretches back many centuries—in northern India, to the Delhi sultanate established at the beginning of the 13th century. The patterns of relationship between Hindus and Muslims have been different between north and south India. While there is a history of conquest and domination in the north, Hindu-Muslim relations in Kerala and Tamil Nadu have been peaceful. Islam came to south India very early, possibly about the 7th century, through traders and sea routes. There is a vast body of literature on Islam in Tamil composed over almost a thousand years. The early 19th-century Sira Puranam, a biography of the Prophet Muhammad, is an excellent example. There are also hundreds of shared ritual spaces, called dargahs (literally, “doorway” or “threshold”), for Hindus and Muslims. These mark shrines for revered Muslim (frequently Sufi) leaders and are visited by both Muslims and Hindus. Moreover, close proximity and daily interaction throughout the centuries has led to efforts to accommodate the existence of the two religions. One manifestation of such coexistence occurred among some devotional groups who believed that one God, or the “universal principle,” was the same regardless of whether it was called Allah or brahman. Various syntheses between the two religions that emphasize nonsectarianism have arisen in northern India.

Yet there were periods when the political ambitions of Islamic rulers took strength from iconoclastic aspects of Muslim teaching and led to the devastation of many major Hindu temple complexes, from Mathura and Varanasi (Banaras) in the north to Chidambaram, Sriringam, and Madurai in the far south; other temples were converted to mosques. Episodically, since the 14th century this history has provided rhetorical fuel for Hindu anger against Muslim rulers. The bloody partition of the South Asian subcontinent into India and Pakistan in 1947 added a new dimension. Mobilizing Hindu sensibilities about the sacredness of the land as a whole, Hindus have sometimes depicted the creation of Pakistan as a dismemberment of the body of India, in the process demonizing Muslims who have remained within India’s political boundaries.

These strands converged at the end of the 20th century in a campaign to destroy the mosque built in 1528 by a lieutenant of the Mughal emperor Bābur in Ayodhya, a city that has traditionally been identified as the place where Rama was born and ruled. In 1992 militant Hindu nationalists from throughout India, who had been organized by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP; “World Hindu Council”), the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS; “National Volunteer Alliance”), and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; “Indian People’s Party”), destroyed the mosque in an effort to “liberate” Rama and establish a huge “Rama’s Birthplace Temple” on the spot. The continuing tensions in the Kashmir region have also spawned outbursts of sectarian violence on both sides, including the destruction of some Hindu temples there by militant Muslims. Yet, although the relationship between Hindus and Muslims within India remains complicated and there are occasional eruptions of tension and violence, in many areas they have been able to coexist peacefully.

Hinduism and Christianity

Relations between Hinduism and Christianity have been shaped by unequal balances of political power and cultural influence. Although communities of Christians have lived in southern India since the middle of the 1st millennium, the great expansion of Indian Christianity followed the efforts of missionaries working under the protection of British colonial rule. Their denigration of selected features of Hindu practice—most notably image worship, suttee, and child marriage (the first two were also criticized by Muslims)—was shared by certain Hindus. Beginning in the 19th century and continuing into the 21st, a movement that might be called neo-Vedanta has emphasized the monism of certain Upanishads, decried “popular” Hindu “degenerations” such as the worship of idols, acted as an agent of social reform, and championed dialogue between other religious communities.

Many Hindus are ready to accept the ethical teachings of the Gospels, particularly the Sermon on the Mount (whose influence on Gandhi is well known), but reject the theological superstructure. They regard Christian conceptions about love and its social consequences as a kind of bhakti and tend to venerate Jesus as a saint, yet many resent the organization, the reliance on authorities, and the exclusiveness of Christianity, considering these as obstacles to harmonious cooperation. They subscribe to Gandhi’s opinion that missionaries should confine their activities to humanitarian service and look askance at conversion, finding also in Hinduism what might be attractive in Christianity. A far more typical sentiment is expressed in the eagerness of Hindus of all social stations, especially the middle class, to send their children to high-quality (often English-language) schools established and maintained by Christian organizations. No great fear exists that the religious element in the curriculum will cause Hindu children to abandon their parents’ faith.

Vivekananda

Since the appearance of Swami Vivekananda at the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 and the subsequent establishment of the Vedanta Society in various American and British cities, Hinduism has had a growing missionary profile outside the Indian subcontinent. Conversion as understood by Christians or Muslims is usually not the aim. As seen in the Vedanta Society, Hindu perspectives are held to be sufficiently capacious that they do not require new adherents to abandon traditions of worship with which they are familiar, merely to see them as part of a greater whole. The Vedic formula “Truth is one, but scholars speak of it in many ways” (“Ekam sat vipra bahudha vadanti”) is much quoted. Many transnational Hindu communities—including Radha Soami Satsang Beas, Transcendental Meditation, the self-realization fellowship Siddha Yoga, the Sathya Sai Baba Satsang, and the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON, popularly called Hare Krishna)—have focused on specific gurus or on forms of religious praxis such as devotional worship or meditation, particularly in their stages of most rapid growth. They frequently emphasize techniques of spiritual discipline more than doctrine. Of these groups, only ISKCON has a deeply exclusivist cast—which makes it, in fact, generally more doctrinaire than the Gaudiya Vaishnava lineages out of which its founding guru, A.C. Bhaktivedanta, emerged.

At least as important as these guru-centred communities in the increasingly international texture of Hindu life are communities of Hindus who have emigrated from South Asia to other parts of the world. Their character differs markedly according to region, class, and the time at which emigration occurred. Tamils in Malaysia celebrate a festival to the god Murugan (Thaipusam) that accommodates body-piercing vows. Formerly indentured labourers who settled on the Caribbean island of Trinidad in the mid-19th century have consolidated doctrine and practice from various locales in Gangetic India, with the result that Rama and Sita have a heightened profile. Many migrants from rural western India, especially Gujarat, became urbanized in East Africa in the late 19th century and resettled in Britain. Like those Gujaratis who came directly to the United States from India since the liberalization of U.S. immigration laws in 1965, once abroad they are more apt to embrace the reformist guru-centred Swaminarayan faith than they would be in their native Gujarat, though this is by no means universal.

Professional-class emigrants from South India have spearheaded the construction of a series of impressive Shrivaishnava-style temples throughout the United States, sometimes receiving financial and technical assistance from the great Vaishnava temple institutions at Tirupati. The placement of some of these temples, such as the Penn Hills temple near Pittsburgh, Pa., reveals the desire to evoke Tirupati’s natural environment on American soil. Similarly, Telugu-speaking priests from the Tirupati region have been imported to serve at temples such as the historically important Ganesha temple, constructed in Queens, New York, in 1975–77. Yet the population worshipping at these temples is far more mixed than that in India. This produces on the one hand sectarian and regional eclecticism and on the other hand a vigorous attempt to establish doctrinal common ground. As Vasudha Narayanan observed, educational materials produced at such temples typically hold that Hinduism is not a religion but a way of life, that it insists in principle on religious tolerance, that its Godhead is functionally trinitarian (the male trimurti of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva is meant, although temple worship is often very active at goddesses’ shrines), and that Hindu rituals have inner meanings consonant with scientific principles and are conducive to good health.

A small fraction of diaspora Hindus are also important contributors to the VHP, whose efforts since 1964 to find common ground among disparate Hindu groups have not only helped establish educational programs for youths but sometimes also contributed to displays of Hindu nationalism such as were seen at Ayodhya in 1992. The struggle between “left” and “right” within the Hindu fold continued into the early 21st century, with diasporic groups playing a more important role than ever before. Because of their wealth and education, because globalizing processes lend them prestige and enable them to communicate constantly with Hindus living in South Asia, and because their experience as minorities tends to set them apart from their families in India itself, their contribution to the evolution of Hinduism has been a very interesting one.

“Hinduism,” originally an outsider’s word, designates a multitude of realities defined by period, time, sect, class, and caste. Yet the veins and bones that hold this complex organism together are not just chimeras of external perception. Hindus themselves—particularly diasporic Hindus—affirm them, continuing and even accelerating a process of self-definition that has been going on for millennia.