Publisher's Synopsis
This book treats two representative Hindu rituals of contemporary India, Puja (offering service) and Samskara rites are performed at significant junctures of an individual's life, from birth to death, by the individual's family. Puja rites, rather than being performed in relation to the life cycle of an individual in a family, are more deeply related to the annual rituals of the cult to which an individual or the person's family belongs. Persons may go to a temple and request priests to perform Puja rites, or they may perform them themselves at home. This book presents a large number of photographs so that readers are able to gain an accurate grasp of them. And let us say that this is intended not merely to introduce Puja and Samskara rituals, but to indicate the place of ritual in the total structure of religion.
