Puja
Ceremonial Hindu worship offered to a deity at a home shrine or in a temple.
Ceremonial worship offered to a deity at a home shrine or in a temple. The deity, present in a consecrated image, receives the attentions given an honored guest: bathing, dressing, flowers, food, incense and lamplight, in sequences of offerings called upacharas. Home puja is usually brief and family-led; temple puja is conducted by priests. Food offered and then shared with worshippers becomes prasada, a portion of the blessing.
Puja treats the deity present in a consecrated image as an honoured guest, and the acts that follow are the acts of hospitality: the guest is greeted, bathed, dressed, garlanded, offered food and incense and light, and finally seen off. Those acts are counted in sequences called upacharas, and a full temple sequence traditionally runs to sixteen.
Scale is what varies most. Home puja is often a few minutes at a shelf or a cupboard shrine, led by whoever in the household keeps it, frequently a woman, with no priest involved at all. Temple puja is conducted by priests to a fixed daily timetable, and at large temples the sequence is performed several times a day whether or not anyone is watching.
Food offered during puja and then shared out becomes prasada, which is understood as carrying a portion of the blessing. Receiving it is not incidental to the rite; for many people it is the part they came for.
Does it have a text?
Puja has no single text. It is a sequence of actions, and the words that accompany it differ by deity, region, household and the priest performing it. There is nothing here that could be printed as the wording of a puja, and inventing one would be worse than leaving it out.
Terms on this page
- puja
- Ceremonial worship in which a deity receives offerings and attentions as an honored guest; performed daily at home shrines and, with priestly mediation, in temples.
- murti
- A consecrated image or statue through which a deity is present to worshippers; from the Sanskrit for form or embodiment, and not accurately translated as idol.
- prasada
- Food or other offerings presented to a deity and returned to worshippers as blessed; sharing prasada distributes the grace of the worship.
When it comes up
Other forms of prayer in Hindu
- Darshan — Seeing and being seen by the deity, and the main point of most Hindu temple visits.
- Mantra and japa — Sacred sound as a devotional medium, and counted repetition of a formula or divine name.
- Aarti — The Hindu ceremony of light, in which a flame is circled before the deity.
- Bhajan and kirtan — Devotional song, and the shared call-and-response singing of divine names.
- Vrata — A vowed Hindu observance, most often a fast kept on days tied to a chosen deity.
This page describes a practice. It does not tell you how to perform it, or whether you should. Practice varies by region, community and household far more than a page like this can carry, and nobody credentialed in the tradition has signed anything here. The full dossier names its sources.