The annual Ārdra Darśanam Festival (Mahotsava in Sanskrit, Tiruvāturai in Tamil) is held at Cidambaram in honor of the Ārdra star. It falls during the longest night of the year, in the Tamil month of Mārkaḷi (December/ January). The constellation of Orion and surrounding stars is bathed in the soft…

Lord Viṭṭhal is the cowherd Kṛṣṇa at Pandharpur in Maharashtra. All the great Vārkarī saints, from Jn͂āneśvar in the thirteenth century to Niḷobā in the eighteenth, find their fulfilment in contemplating his feet. Their voices delight in singing his praises. …

Taḷḷapāka Annamācārya lived at the great hilltop shrine of Tirupati in south India, in Andhra Pradesh, in the fifteenth century, and is said to have composed a pādam a day for the god of this temple, Veṅkaṭeśvara, Lord Viṣṇu. Late in his lifetime, or not long after his death, about…

Since his genesis around the year 900 in sculpture and in hymns, Śiva as Naṭarāja has been associated with Cidambaram (in Tamil, Tillai), residing in the innermost enclosure of the temple complex in the Hall of Consciousness, the cit-sabha. By the seventh century, saints Appār, Sambandār, Sundarar, and Māṇikkavācakar had…

Bilvamaṅgaḷa, the poet-saint and itinerant singer from the south whose songs in praise of the child Kṛṣṇa were compiled in two manuscripts: the Kṛṣṇakarṇāmritam and the Bālagōpālastuti. Bilvamaṅgaḷa lived between c. 1220 and 1300 in the Travancore region of Kerala and travelled across the country to various shrines, singing his…

Śakunāvali, A Garland of Omens, comes from the word Śakuna (शकुन) meaning omen. Śakunas are considered to be harbingers of either good or evil, auspiciousness or inauspiciousness. Andrew Topsfield in Court Painting at Udaipur writes that this Śakunāvali series was a unique commission in Udaipur. It consisted of almost a…

In the tenth skanda of the Bhāgavata purāṇa, after Kṛṣṇa defeated Kaṃsa and embarked on princely adventures with his brother Balarāma, Kṛṣṇa along with all the Yādavas gathered by the water bodies at the sacred pilgrimage site of Syamantapañcaka in Kurukṣetra (in modern-day Haryana) to bathe on the occasion and…

In the Vedic period, Śri is an abstract quality rather than a goddess, identified with splendor, glory, majesty, brilliance, and the divine power of auspiciousness. Śri is the power of life and vitality, and that which is touched by Śri becomes radiant with health, wealth, well-being, abundance, and bounteous prosperity…

The Jagamohan or Audience Hall of the Temple to Sūrya at Konark has come to be more specifically known as the “Black Pagoda.” This has probably come about through some association of the epithet kāla, meaning “black,” which the Hindoos apply to all deserted or desecrated religious edifices. The term…