Puja

(“homage”) The most common word for
worship in modern Hinduism. The root
of the word carries the sense of reverence or respect, but puja is primarily
focused on actions, particularly offerings to the deity, who is treated as an
honored guest. Although, according to
one list, there are sixteen such offerings
(upacharas), in practice the worship
performed in any particular setting is
subject to wide variation—based on
regional or local custom, individual
inclination, and the person’s social status and learning. At the heart of puja,
however, is a series of transactions
between the deity and devotee (bhakta).
One such transaction comes in darshan,
the exchange of glances between
an image of the deity and a devotee,
which initiates the relationship between
the two. The other transactions come
from offerings given by the devotee, to
which the deity responds by giving
prasad sanctified by divine contact,
most often food or drink for the devotee
to consume.
Aside from the transactions, the
other most common feature of most
puja is the emphasis on purity, both of
worshiper and of context. The only
exception to this arises in certain forms
of tantra, a secret, ritually based religious practice in which the performer
deliberately inverts normal ideas of
purity and impurity (ashaucha) as a way
of symbolically destroying all duality.
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Puja
Devotees commonly purify themselves
before worship, and the purity of the
site, and the objects used in worship,
must be either established (in the case
of a place or things not generally used
for worship) or maintained (as in the
case of a temple or other regularly established place).
In its most basic conception, the
temple is a home for the deity, a ritually
pure environment. Most temples have at
least two different “purity zones,” an
outer zone into which the devotees may
enter, and an inner zone closest to deity,
restricted to the temple priests. In their
purity requirements, deities show as
much variation as one finds in the
human community, and stricter concern for purity indicates higher status,
just as for human beings. Whereas village deities are often served by nonbrahmin priests and typically take
offerings of meat, blood, and liquor, the
higher deities are always served by brahmin priests, and the food offered to
them is invariably vegetarian. As the ritually purest of all human beings, the
brahmin priest acts as an intermediary
between the high deities and other worshipers, shielding the deity from potentially contaminating contact. His high
ritual purity also makes the brahmin a
universal donor, from whose hand all
people can receive prasad without fear
of pollution. For further information see
C. J. Fuller, “Hindu Temple Priests,” in
T. N. Madan (ed.), Religion in India, 1991.