Re: There is no Idol Worship in Hinduism
Hinduism ‘idol’ worship needs to be understood
Friday, April 11, 2008By NARAYANA P. BHAT
For The Times
From the earliest dawn of religious consciousness in human beings, people have implicitly attempted to realize the Divine by the use of various intermediary icons.
Such vehicles of worship and meditation have included divine images, sacred relics of saints and hallowed objects of many descriptions. The use of images as a path through which finite humanity can approach the Infinite has been the overwhelming norm in the history of the world’s many religions.
In Hinduism there is no explicit reference to iconic worship in the ancient scriptures called Vedas. The later scriptures, like Puranas and the Agamas, have descriptions of worship, both in the houses and temples, using figurines derived from divine characters in the Puranas, called deities. This relevance adds sanctity while eliminating arbitrariness from the science of image veneration.
Such representations of God in anthropomorphic forms like Ganesha, Siva, Krishna and others are called Murtis. There are very exacting physical specifications for sculpting murtis, special rituals to consecrate them as well as specific sacred incantations to be chanted during the ceremony called Prana Pratishta.
Ancient Hindu seers and other teachers of Vedanta advocated the spiritual practice of fostering loving devotion (Bhakti), to a personal deity with auspicious attributes as the simplest means for God realization.
There is a child-like innocence and purity of approach when a person stands reverently in front of his or her deity and bows before it in total submission, which qualities are hard to achieve by a human who otherwise is grounded in materialism.
If the deity remains mute without any response, which generally is the case, it would not shake his confidence or faith. A devout Hindu will be contented with the mere fact that his prayers have been heard and accepted. His firm, ceaseless and unshakeable love of God, which surpasses every other form of affection and attachment, and which is based on and inspired by a full knowledge of His transcendent majesty, can be effectively expressed only when he is in front of an entity which often resembles himself. In his realm of imagination it elevates him closer to his beloved deity thus uplifting his spiritual empowerment.
Are Hindus actually idol worshipers? The term “idol” refers specifically to an image that is made up, concocted in the mind of its maker, and then claimed to be a divinity and not as a result of the teachings of sacred scriptures. Hindus are not idol worshipers because the deities venerated in their prayers are not conceived by the worshipers.
At the same time, the concept of deities does not represent polytheistic philosophy since they are mere representations of the various aspects of one and the same Supreme Brahman.
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