introduction. 13
modern practice, especially in life-cycle rites, and they do thereby serve a unifying
function. But much more influential commonalities appear in a ritual vocabulary
that is completely unknown in Vedic texts, where the worship of God is articulated
through icons or images (murti, arca).
Broadly, this worship is calledpuja(“praising [the deity]”). It echoes conventions
of hospitality that might be performed for an honored guest, and the giving and
sharing of food is central. Such food is calledprasada(Hindi,prasad:“grace”), re-
flecting the recognition that when human beings make offerings to divine ones, the
initiative is not really theirs. They are actually responding to the prevenient gen-
erosity that bore them into a world fecund with life and auspicious possibility. The
divine personality installed as a home or temple image receives such food, tasting it
(Hindus differ as to whether this is a real or symbolic act, gross or subtle), and of-
fering the remnant to worshippers as leftovers. Consuming these leftovers, wor-
shippers accept their creaturely status as beings inferior to and dependent upon the
divine. An element of tension arises because the logic ofpujaandprasadawould
seem to accord all humans an equally ancillary status with respect to God, yet rules
of exclusionary commensality have often been sanctified rather than challenged by
prasada-based ritual. People regarded as low caste or entirely beyond caste by Hin-
dus whose caste position is secure have historically been forbidden to enter certain
Hindu temples out of the conviction that their presence would pollute the holy
precincts. This practice can still be found today, but only rarely: it has been out-
lawed in India’s constitution, and a number of groups are dedicated to eradicating
it completely.
society
This area of activity introduces a third aspect that has perennially served to organ-
ize Hindu life: society. When the Central Asian scholar al-Biruni traveled to India
in the early eleventh century, he was struck by an apparently ancient, unusually
well-stratified (if locally variant) system of social relations that has come to be
called in English the caste system. When one hears the term, one thinks of the four
ideal classifications(varna)that are enshrined in certain ancient texts—Brahmins
(scholars, priests), Kshatriyas (rulers, warriors), Vaishyas (artisans), and Shudras
(laborers)—and sometimes it is necessary to add a fifth, lowest classification (“Un-
touchables”) that doesn’t even make it onto the chart. There is a vast slippage be-
tween this conceptual system and the thousands of endogamous birth-groups( jati)
that constitute Indian society “on the ground,” but few would dispute the percep-
tion that Indian society has been notably plural and hierarchical both in concept and