Practices

These hold at most temples regardless of deity or region, so a temple record does not list them individually.

• Abhishekam

  The ritual bathing of the murti. At most temples you buy a ticket and watch rather than pour — the substances are handled by the priests, and some of them come back to you afterwards as prasadam.

• Archana

  An offering made in your name while the deity's names are recited — 108 of them, or a thousand. You give your name, lineage and birth star, and they are spoken into the rite so that it is performed on your behalf.

• Deepa aradhana

  The lamp shown to the deity and then held out to you. You pass your hands over the flame and touch them to your eyes. It closes the worship, and it costs nothing.

• Annadanam

  Free food, served to anyone who walks in. No ticket, no payment, no test of caste or income. At Tirumala it runs to more than two hundred thousand meals on a busy day.

• Prasadam

  Food offered to the deity first and then given to you. Received in the right hand. At Puri it is bought at an open-air market inside the temple wall; at Tirumala it is a laddu handed over at the counter as you leave.

• Theertham

  A few drops of consecrated water poured into your cupped right palm at the close of darshan. You drink it without your lips touching your hand. It is never charged for.

• Pradakshina

  Walking round the shrine with it always on your right. At a Shiva temple you do not complete the circle — you stop at the drain channel on the north side and go back the way you came.

• Circling the sacred tree

  Every temple has its own tree, standing on a platform in the prakara with serpent stones at the foot. You walk round it clockwise, and you may pour water at the root or tie a thread or a small cradle to a branch.

• Homa

  An offering made into fire. In its domestic form the householder tends it twice a day with no priest involved at all; in its temple form it is a bookable seva performed at a fire pit by a married officiant.

• Vratam

  An observance kept for a fixed period — usually with fasting, often with dress and grooming restrictions. Not one practice but a frame that many practices sit inside.

• Anna prashana

  A child's first solid food, given in the sixth month. At many temples it is bought like any other offering and performed there.

• Kumkumarchana

  Archana with vermilion. The same rite as an ordinary archana, but a pinch of kumkum is offered with each name rather than a flower. Performed at goddess temples.

• Tonsure

  Shaving the head as a vow. At Tirumala it is free, available around the clock, and done by some 1,148 tonsurers — around seventy per cent of pilgrims offer their hair, which the temple then sorts and sells at auction.

• Walking up to Tirumala

  Climbing the hill on foot as the vow itself, rather than taking the road. Two routes, around 3,500 steps on the longer one, and a free darshan queue at the top for those who walk.

• The eighteen steps

  At Sabarimala the eighteen steps to the shrine may only be climbed by someone carrying the irumudi — the two-part head bundle that shows the forty-one day austerity has been kept. Everyone else takes a different route to darshan.

• Kavadi attam

  A burden carried on the shoulders for Murugan, often with the cheeks and tongue pierced by a small spear. Preceded by a fast of up to forty-eight days. Carried at Palani and, on a very large scale, at Thaipusam in Malaysia and Singapore.

• Angapradakshinam

  Rolling the circuit rather than walking it. You bathe, stay in the wet clothes, lie flat on the stone and roll sideways the whole way round, keeping the shrine on your right.

• Girivalam

  Walking the fourteen kilometres around Arunachala with the hill on your right, usually barefoot, usually before dawn or after dark. On a full moon the road carries crowds in the millions.

• Rath Yatra

  The deities leave the temple on chariots and the public pulls them through the street. At Puri it is the one occasion on which those barred from the temple can see the deity, and it costs nothing.

• Kalyanotsavam

  The deity's marriage, performed as a ticketed seva with devotees attending as wedding guests. Almost everything commonly stated about it at Tirumala — the price, the timing, the eligibility — traces to commercial resellers rather than to the temple.

• Padayatra

  Pilgrimage walked over distance — days or weeks of road, as distinct from climbing the steps of one temple at the end of it.

• Mangalya puja

  Worship undertaken to obtain a marriage, or for a husband's wellbeing. The name covers several genuinely different observances, which are kept apart here.

• Thulabharam

  You sit on one pan of a large balance and the other is loaded with something — bananas, jaggery, sugar, coins — until it matches your weight. What balances you is then given to the temple.

• Serpent affliction remedies

  Rites addressing affliction attributed to serpents — most often to a serpent killed by an ancestor. At Kukke Subrahmanya the central rite performs funeral offerings for the snake itself.

• Pinda daan

  Offerings of rice balls and water made for the dead, most fully at Gaya, where the rite runs across dozens of sites over days and is completed only when the hereditary priest pronounces it so.