Perspectives
Joanne Waghorne is a religion professor at UNC-CH Next | Back | Section | Home | Index

(RealAudio) A lot of sculptors will again differently interpret this. But some feel the image really is already in the stone. What they are doing is releasing it. For others, no, that they are following very careful rules and they will make that stone into its body suitable for its entrance into divinity. Once that has happened, and that carving is done, then the image is ready to go through a very, very long ritual process which, when done in India is a 48-day ceremony, of consecrating the now fully carved image and putting it into the sanctum.

And there are several steps, because there is the step whereby the murti now itself, moves from a state of being an interesting stone sculpture to being a divine body. And that's what the entire process of the prahna prashtishta is, that is of the infusing of life. Prahna means "life breath." And so this means literally the putting the life breath into the stone and making a change.

I've probably witnessed about 20 of these consecration rituals. And in all cases, it's been very obvious to see the way the image changes throughout this 48-day period in the way it's regarded. When the murtis arrive and they're unpacked at the new temple, people just unpack them. And there's a certain amount of concern: they wouldn't do something like throw their coat over it. I mean, nobody is just going to throw their coat over it or do something careless like that. But you can come up and touch it. People can come. In fact they do, because they know it's the last time they will be able to touch it. They'll come. They'll touch it, look at it very closely and the kind of comments that people make at that point are: "Isn't it beautiful?" And it's the same kind of comment we would make about a sculpture in a museum. "Isn't that nicely done? Look at the way the carving has been done." It's totally judged by its beauty and by its artistic value at that stage.

Then the actual stone goes through a series of substantial changes. That is, the substance of the stone is literally changed. And the stone will be put, now the carved murti, will be put in each successive day in this 48-day period, in different substances, actually transmuting that stone into something else. And so, it will lie in a bath of water. It will lie on rice. It will be covered with grain. It will have flowers. It will go through a whole series of baths, various baths and various coverings to move it from a state of being stone to a body fit to have divine presence.