Rituals

A lifetime rite that marks and sanctifies a stage of life. Hindu tradition describes sixteen; few families perform all of them.

Birth, naming a child, upanayana (the sacred thread ceremony), marriage, retirement, and death and cremation.

Brahmacharya (study of the Vedas), grihastha (married householder), vanaprastha (retirement), sannyasa (renunciation).

An image in which a deity is held to be present — not a representation the worshipper looks at.

Seeing the deity and being seen by the deity: Hindus describe worship before a murti as a mutual seeing.

The lamp ceremony: a lamp is circled before the murti with bells, conch or drum and bhajans, devotional songs.

Food offered to the deity and then shared among worshippers as blessed — receiving back what was given.

A personal deity chosen for devotion from among many, which is why two orthodox Hindu households may worship quite differently.

Pilgrimage — to sacred rivers, shrines and the kumbha-melas, the great bathing fairs. It is undertaken rather than obligatory.

Ritual purification with water, with which worship usually begins.

Community work, often undertaken at an ashram. The guide names it alongside pilgrimage.

Holi, Vaisakhi, Navaratri, Dasara and Divali — with regional, family and caste variations in all of them.

The calendar is luni-solar: months follow the moon and an extra month is added periodically to keep the year in step with the seasons.

Nine nights devoted to the Goddess in her forms. It is observed very differently across India — as fasting and worship, as garba dancing, or as displays of figures.

The same day marks Rama's defeat of Ravana in much of the north and Durga's victory in parts of the east and south.

Domestic puja is very often led by women, and there are major female deities and female gurus leading modern movements.

Samskaras exist for both sexes but with more emphasis on males, and upanayana has traditionally been for boys of the higher varnas.

Brahmins (priests and teachers), kshatriyas (rulers and warriors), vaishyas (merchants and farmers), shudras (servants and labourers).

Varna is the classical fourfold ordering discussed in the texts; jati is the far more numerous actual birth community a person belongs to.

Because it means "oppressed" and is the name the communities historically treated as untouchable use of themselves. "Untouchable" names a treatment, not a people.

As controversial within Hindu society, illegal as a form of discrimination, but in its own words "none-the-less habitual".