> >Aradhya Devata >Devdutt Pattanaik > > > > >In a traditional puja room, in Hindu households, one will find many images of deities, some made of metal, some of stone, some mere rocks with no particular form, often smeared with vermilion, and adorned with silver eyes, bedecked with jewellery and flowers and cloth. > > >It is only in the last 100 years, after the arrival of the printing press, that people replaced these images of metal and stone with photo frames of very human looking gods and goddesses, thanks to a large extent, to Raja Ravi Verma, whose printing press made very human looking deities part of popular culture. Otherwise, gods were formless, mere rocks, or perfectly formed, geometrically determined symmetrical and ideally proportioned manifestations of the divine. >When asked who were these gods, most people would not have names. >Yes, they could be identified as the more popular Hindu gods: >Shiva, Vishnu, Lakshmi, Saraswati, that we are all familiar with today thanks to Amar Chitra Katha and Chandamama and Sagar serials and Bollywood mythological, but more often than not they would be identified as Bir or Bhairo or Appa or Raje, words that meant basically brave man, strong man, king, lord, master, father, benefactor. >Or the feminine ones such as Ai, Amma, Devi, Akka, mother, lady, sister or even maiden, Kumari. > >On probing deeper, we would be told, the deity is either a >kula-devata, the deity of the family, >Or >grama-devata, the deity of the village, >Or >isha-devata, the personal god.Often every member of the family had an aradhya-devata, a personal favorite god, often the same as ishta. >When a woman got married, she carried her ishta-devata, kula-devata, aradhya-devata along with her, usually maybe just rocks tied in a red cloth. Thus the puja-room connected her with her family, and her husband's family, with the divine. Everyone was part of the same cloth woven on the divine loom. > >So when a person entered the puja room, he saw effigies of many gods, and through that the personal, village, clan and favourite gods of every member of the family. The constant was the one of the men -- who never left their house, their kula and grama never changing. The only change may be their ishta. But the women of the household would carry their gods with them. A set of gods with every bride. This was the river of change, that ensured the household never stagnated with old values. Through the women, the kitchen changed, new gods, new seeds, new values, new beliefs, new customs, kept coming into the house. > >Puja rooms were thus not mere religious observances or what is disdainfully called idol worship. They were social tools meant to engineer bonding between people, families, communities, clans, and villages. That everyone had a 'god' was a reminder, that everyone is special, everyone seeks validation. >
Oh - what a fantastic article? many times people are confused when they enter our puja room. 1. Our family follows advaitik tradition and hence we wear vibuthi and Rudraksham. 2. Many of us have Kuladeivam as Tiruppathi Balaji or Thiruvallur veer ragava swamy soVishnu occupies the prime place with worship of his moorti in various forms including saligrama and as kuladeivam he occupies the first place. 2. Vinayaga as usual being the one to be worshipped first. 3. The Kuladeivam of mother is Periyandavar near dindivanam. A village deity. 4. My inlaws kuladivam beddaranyar near thiruvaroor. Another village deity. 5. The ishta devatha of the family is Bhuvaneswari worshipped in yantra form. My ancestors from both sides were Sri Vidya Upasakas. Many peopel questions us like this. Neenga perumalak kumbudareenga? adhuvum vibuthi ittukittu? Perumal kuladeivamna appo edhukku srichakram ( for them all yantras are srichakkaram) Pooja pannareenga? Neenga grama devathaya kumbuduveengala? Ennathu first pattirikka grama samikka? yes sir - yes sir - All true.we are missing many tradition after urbanisation and wrongly understanding traditions.