Prasad

(“favor”) Prasad is food or drink that has
been offered to a deity as part of normal
worship and, having been sanctified by
the deity’s power, is later distributed to
worshipers as a symbol of the deity’s
grace. In this process, the deity is
believed to have “consumed” part of the
food offering, and thus—in keeping
with everyday ideas about the contaminating power of saliva—to have
“imprinted” the food with its substance.
Since this substance has been “charged”
with divine presence, it is given to devotees (bhakta) as an emblem of the
deity’s grace, and worshipers consume it
in the belief that this sanctifies them. Its
sacred qualities mean that prasad is
treated differently than regular food: It
cannot be refused and can never be
thrown away. If one cannot eat it, the
favored method of disposal is to feed it
to a cow. See also jutha.