An altar or home shrine is a sacred space where Hindu families conduct daily worship (Puja) to connect to the divine through prayers, supplication, songs, rituals and offerings. The components of puja provide a multi-sensory experience: worshiping deities’ images; making offerings of light, flowers, water, and food for the gods to bless; and consuming offerings, all with fragrant incense, oil lamps and candles and bells. The 7 items on a puja tray help devotees use all senses, symbolizing that the whole person is involved in devotion: a bell, oil lamp (diya), incense holder, incense, water container, spoon and chopra container for kum kum to mark devotees’ foreheads. Shrines also contain for devotion murtis, sacred deity images containing the spirit of each deity which Hindus believe shows devotion and love to God. The most common deities are Ganesh, Krishna, Shiva, Parvati, Vishnu, Lakshmi, Saraswati, and Nandi, which, depending on the family’s wealth, are made of terracotta, wood, metal (brass bronze, or even silver or gold), stone or marble. Statues, vessels, paintings or objects from nature may also be used and a home may have more than one shrine and display many deities.
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Nandi is among the most frequent Hindu deities worshiped in public places, temples, homes, or on a home altar throughout India. As one of Hinduism’s mythical animals, Nandi is Shiva’s vahana, (his mount that transports him), attendant and leader of his attendants and guardian of all four-footed animals. A recumbent image of Nandi on a…
This Hindu prayer bell was likely placed on a home or temple altar and used in daily puja rituals. It has a smooth and undecorated body with only incised parallel rings circling plain surfaces and is topped by a Garuda pair sheltered by Naga hoods. Garuda, Vishnu’s mythical winged bird mount, and Naga, a seven-headed hooded serpent, are natural enemies but when they are represented together, they symbolizes peace, a very appropriate adornment for the tranquility and serenity elicited by the pleasing sounds of a prayer bell.
A belief in Hinduism is that the light and heat produced by an oil lamp and incense burner aid devotees to access the divine and to focus their attention and awareness on the images of the deities (murti) and their positive powers. Using them with fellow devotees in combination with the arati ritual (moving a…
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