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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This finely cast antique figurine with finely articulated features portrays Nandi with jewels sitting recumbent on a high-tiered throne. Kneeling in reverence to serve Lord Shiva he is a symbol of purity and strength. Small figurines were placed on home shrines with other deities and significant family items. Made using lost wax it is a one-of-a-kind piece
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.
Martin Lerner and Steven Kossak, The Lotus Transcendent: Indian and Southeast Asian Art from the Samuel Eilenberg Collection, New York, Harry Abrams, 1991.
This graceful South Indian cast brass oil lamp with attached spoon was used for Hindu prayer rituals. It has an oil reservoir in the center, a shallow yoni shaped burner at the front, a finial at the end and it is mounted on a flared circular foot. The top surface is decorated with incised floral motifs.
See same lamp from Kerala in Sean Anderson, Flames of Devotion, Los Angeles, UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 2006, Plate 9, p.35.
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