Domestic Worship
While in many points the domestic worship is naturally parallel to that of Ākhrā and temple, still it deserves consideration by itself.
The hold upon the home is the real test of any sect. Worship carried on there has a different meaning, and a greater significance, than that of temple or Ākhrā.
In the ordinary household of any means the formal worship is performed by a household priest, who comes in daily for the purpose:
He is sometimes the pujārī of a temple in the vicinity, but usually only a member of the Purohita class (hereditary priests). He probably serves several other households in the same capacity.
Strange to say, he is not necessarily a Vaishnava, although usually a pujārī of a Vaishnava sect would naturally be chosen for household priest in a Vaishnava home. All that seems to be vitally essential is that he shall know the mantras used in the Krishna puja.
In one devout Vaishnava home of which I know, the household priest is the pujārī of a Kālī temple in the town, and yet his service of Śrī Krishna in the household shrine does not seem less acceptable thereby.
In many cases the household priest has no connection with a temple, but devotes himself entirely to this household service:
He receives a small cash remuneration from each household according to its means, in addition to a part or all of the daily offerings, and sometimes also the income from a small parcel of ground.
Each household possesses a small shrine, called the ṭhākurghar, the house of the god, where the image or images worshipped by the family are kept.
This is usually situated in the courtyard, entirely separate from the living rooms of the house. Twice a day the household priest, or some member of his family, if he is a Brahman, visits the shrine.
The main service is about 9 a.m., when the pūjaka conducts worship with mantras and flower offerings and presents food (bhoga) to the god.
In the evening there is no worship except the Āratī, waving of lights, after which the image is laid to rest for the night.
The number of images housed in the shrine varies in different parts of the country:
In Navadvīpa and the surrounding country, where the memory of Chaitanya is a potent influence, images of himself and Nityānanda (the Gaur-Nitāi) are usually found, in addition to those of Krishna and Rādhā.
A Śālagrāma (a round black stone, traditionally used as an emblem of Vishnu) is Almost always to he found with the images.
In Sylhet generally, I am informed, and this holds true of the Dacca district as well, neither the Gaur-Nitāi nor Chaitanya are commonly found nowadays in the household shrines of Vaishnavas. Their pictures hang on the wall instead, and to them obeisance is made during worship.
It must not be thought that the morning worship performed by the priest is a sort of general service attended by all the household, something in the fashion of the family prayers of a Christian home. It is nothing of the kind.
In the first place, the ṭhākurghar is a small place usually, not intended for general worship; and secondly, the worship is a purely formal affair, a recognition on behalf of the family of the god of the household.
The one way in which the whole household is brought together in a semblance of common worship is at the evening Āratī
when all are supposed to gather in the courtyard before the shrine to witness the waving of the lights. At the conclusion all bow to the God.
In another sense all members of the household do share in the morning worship carried on by the pūjaka:
They all partake of the prasāda, the food which has been offered to the image. The widows of the family make their one solid meal of the day from this food, and the other members all take a little of it.
On special days all food is offered, and thus made prasāda.
Apart from these common acts of worship, the personal devotions of the members of the household vary according to sex, age, and religious inclination.
The following is a literal account, given by a Vaishnava gentleman himself, of the daily worship in his house:
It should be understood that the man is possessed of some means, and bas devoted himself and his household to the service of his religion.
This account cannot, therefore, be taken as representative of the average home; it illustrates rather the extreme of devotion in a home where the god's sevā (service) is made the chief business of the day.
Everyone rises between 4-5 a.m., and baths are taken considerably before sunrise.
Then the lady of the house sweeps the ṭhākurghar and the children gather flowers for the worship. The man of the house gathers the tulsi leaves after his bath.
Tilakas are then put on, and the householder wakes the god, worships him, and decorates him with flowers. The morning Āratī is then performed.
This is the waving of 5 lights (wicks moistened with ghee, not ordinary oil) with a circular motion of the hand, 4 times before the feet, twice before the navel, and once before the face, then 7 times before the whole body - 14 times in all.
All the while the bell is rung with the other hand.
The Āratī sankirtan is then sung, and the same waving process is gone through with the pot of burning incense, called the dhūpāratī.
After the Āratī is performed, the householder sits down for his morning Pūjā, which is followed by reading from the śāstras until about 10 a.m. Then he takes another bath.
The lady of the house now prepares the food and the householder presents it to the god, while the children offer incense and ring the bells. The whole household joins in saṅkīrtana with drums and cymbals, which concludes the food offering.
Now follows the mid-day Āratī (as described), and then prasāda is taken by the whole family, the full meal being made from the prasāda. This is over about 1 p.m.
The household now sits down and listens to the reading of the Vaishnava scriptures, such as the Caitanya Bhāgavata or the Caritamṛta, until about 3 p.m.
Then japa-mālā, the telling of beads, is practised until dusk, when a third bath is taken. Then comes the evening Āratī, after which Sankirtan continues until about 10 p.m.
Food is then presented to the god and the household has its evening meal from the prasāda.
All then retire, to arise at four o'clock the next morning to resume the same programme.
I have omitted to add to the above the worship of the tulsi, which takes place thrice daily-morning, noon and night - in what is called pradakṣiṇ, circumambulating the tulsi plant, all the while keeping the right shoulder towards it.
On festival days special arrangements are made, the Saṅkīrtanas are on a grander scale, and the food is better and more of it. On such days prasāda is given to all who come.
The daily worship of men in the Vaishnava household varies considerably:
In the Vaishnava home of one of my students, the father, being a Brahman, follows the traditional requirements for a Brahman's sandhyā, i.e. daily prayers; he observes no specially Vaishnava practices whatever in his private devotions.
He has a private room for his devotions in which there are no images, and he does not go near the ṭhākurghar. When not at worship, the reading of the Vaishnava scriptures is the chief occupation of his leisure time.
In another home described to me, the male member who devotes the most time to worship, rises from his bed with the repetition of Krishna's name, which continues until the bath.
Considerable time is spent at the bath in the ritual connected therewith. After the bath he enters the ṭhākurghar for the morning worship:
This consists of the repetition of one's secret mantra, and more or less of the ritual stated above for the worship of the guru, Chaitanya and Krishna.
If rainy weather has curtailed the bath ceremonial, a longer time is spent in the ṭhākurghar.
After this worship is over, another form of Harināma is resorted to, namely, the writing of the sacred name:
In this case, the things of the West being eschewed, the writing is done on fresh palm leaves with a sharp-pointed piece of bamboo. Ordinarily, paper is used, and sometimes a slate. This act of worship and merit may go on in the midst of conversation.
A second bath takes place at midday, after which flowers are offered in the ṭhākurghar and some prasāda is taken.
In the evening a third bath occurs, rather more ceremonial than cleansing, and clean clothes are put on before the evening worship.
From all I can gather, the use of the beads, japa-mala, has very largely dropped out of the practice of ordinary Vaishnava laymen in Bengal.
Elderly men still use them, and here and there younger men can be found who maintain the custom, but on the whole the practice has greatly declined.
With many men, practically the only personal worship of the day is the repetition of one's secret mantra after the morning bath. As this involves the name of Krishna, it serves as Harināma.
In addition, there may be a mantra to the guru and to Rādhā-Krishna, but the practice in this respect varies greatly.
In humbler households, where no priest is employed for the formal worship of the god, the head of the family usually makes the presentation of food.
The women of the household, as in most countries, devote more time than men to the daily worship:
Their first work in the day is the cleansing of the ṭhākurghar, and the mound on which grows a bit of tulsi plant, with lep, a mixture of cow dung and water, everywhere used in Bengal.
The shrine has already been opened by some member of the family, and the god aroused from sleep by clapping of the hands or ringing of a gong or a bell:
One of my students tells me that this act is invariably performed in his family by the grandmother.
The morning bath is taken early with mantras, but the women as a rule do not mark the body as do the men. Harināma is performed after the bath, the rosary of beads being very commonly used among the women.
A student tells me of a vivid memory of his grandmother chanting the name of Krishna as she came from the bath.
Following the bath is the morning worship, which for most women consists of sitting alone in the ṭhākurghar, for a half hour or so, repeating their secret mantra.
The flowers used in the morning worship by the priest are usually gathered by the women folk at this time, and they also prepare the sandal paste required for the flower offerings.
The food offered to the god is prepared by one of the elderly females of the household.
At noon the beads are taken down from their resting place, out of the reach of inquisitive child fingers, for a period of Harināma, the repetition of the divine name. Often they are washed and worshipped with flowers at this time, although this is not universal.
In the evening again the beads are told for a longer time, widows especially spending much time in this form of devotion.
The important act of the evening, after the ceremony of the lights, attended by all, is the placing of the lamp before the tulsi plant in the courtyard.
An invariable object in every Vaishnava home is this little mound of earth, on the top of which is kept growing a sprig of the sacred tulsi.
Near the top of the mound is a little niche, where a tiny clay saucer is placed nightly, its shallow depth filled with mustard oil and a piece of cloth added for a wick.
In wealthier homes ghee is used instead of mustard oil. The mound is cleansed with lep before lighting, even if it has been so cleansed in the morning.
In homes where no household priest is employed, the evening Āratī, the waving of lights, is often performed by the mother.
Young girls perform no pūjā at all:
They wash or sweep the tulsi mound in the morning, while the older woman is cleansing the god's house, and they help in picking flowers for use in the worship, but they do no worship themselves.
If the gathering of flowers requires leaving the home, girls do not go.
No girl is initiated before her marriage; and in the eyes of Hinduism she worships only with and through her husband. The boys of a family are supposed to perform sandhya from the time of their initiation.
In one humble and devout home known to me, where the mother is a widow, her principal form of worship for the day consists of pouring water on the tulsi plant after her bath, and then, after putting on the 12 Tilakas, sitting before a water-pot, in which a tulsi leaf has been placed, in silent repetition of her secret mantra.
In conclusion obeisance is made to the water. The water in the pot represents the sacred water of the Ganges.
This instance represents a case where the body marks are used by a woman not of the vairāginī class. No image is used in this worship, and she does not even possess the familiar tulsi beads.
Veneration of the tulsi plant is kept up in a home when practically every other mark of Vaishnavism may have vanished.
At the hour of death, in a Vaishnava home, the dying person is brought into the courtyard and laid by the tulsi plant, that the last breath may be breathed near its sacred leaves.
Given this sense of reverence, it is not strange that its leaves should be considered to possess medicinal value and be used in this way.
Wise speaks of the "Veneration of trees" as "one of the latest outgrowths of corrupt Vaishnavism.”
The reference is doubtless to the tulsi plant, but we may be allowed to doubt the lateness of the custom:
It is widespread in north India among all Vaiṣṇava sects, and is embedded even in Brahman ritual. Certainly the practice long antedates the movement with which we are concerned.
In the village of Dhamrāi, in the Dacca district, a noted Vaishnava centre, the writer observed a use of the tulsi plant which seemed to be a village parallel to the role which it plays in the home:
Under a great spreading tree in the centre of the village, on a platform, was a small mound, in the shape of three steps surmounted by the tulsi plant. The nightly tending of the light was undertaken by the shopkeepers in the neighbourhood.
Something more, perhaps, should be said of the practice of Harināma, which forms so prominent a part of the individual worship of the good Vaishnava.
While the custom, known as japa, is a very old one in Hinduism, it may be said to be particularly characteristic of the Bengal Vaishnavas:
Its prominence in the sect is clearly due to Chaitanya's own practice of chanting the name of Krishna and his repeated emphasis upon its great efficacy.
It is an utterly unritualistic practice, available to the poorest and the most ignorant. Doubtless, this is just why Chaitanya chose to make it one requirement of his school of bhakti:
There are absolutely no ceremonial requirements in connection with it. It can be practised anywhere, at any time, in any condition.
The rosary of tulsi beads, already known to earlier Vaishnava sects, became a great adjunct of the movement and has always been widely used.
Its use is similar to that of the rosary among Roman Catholic Christians, and is designed to facilitate the repetition of the divine name.
The ordinary rosary is composed of 108 beads, made from the wood of the tulsi, although the author of Bengal Peasant Life is authority for the statement, that he himself had seen a rosary consisting of 100,000 beads!
All Vaishnavas are supposed to use the beads after bathing in the morning and at their prayers; nor are they supposed to eat or drink without one round of the beads.
But, as we have seen, the practice has fallen on evil days.
Formerly the rosary could be counted an index of Vaishnava piety. It was a familiar sight and not reserved for the home only.
It was a means of devotion which, like the prayer-wheel one sees in the hands of the hill men in Darjeeling, could be used at all times and places.
Expert Vaishnavas, veterans in the service of Nāma kirtan, can manage very often to serve God and mammon at the same time. They may be seen listening to a conversation and taking their part in it, and at the same time engaged in counting their beads.
The particular mantra used for Harināma, and known as the Harināma mantra, is of great popularity because of its having been used by Chaitanya himself:
Its 16 names and 32 syllables are chanted over and over again.
It is as follows:
Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, Hare, Hare,
Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma, Rāma, Hare, Hare.
One of the great stories of Vaishnava devotion will always be that of Haridāsa, i.e. convert from Islam, who is believed to have performed Harināma to the number of three lakhs daily.