ABSTRACT
This chapter inquires into the kind of presence that the deity as Supreme Being assumes in the consecrated image. It focuses on the rationale underlying the formation of the image from a devotional point of view and on the liturgical act of worship, mainly with reference to such worship in the temple. The emotional delights and anguished yearnings associated with image-worship reverberate throughout the annals of Hindu devotional literature. The images of the subsidiary deities or forms of the presiding deity, disposed in various shrines around the temple. Analogous to the way the Supreme Deity may be approached as the subject of philosophical and theological intelligibility on three levels, the cultus of image-worship may also be regarded as existing simultaneously on three levels: the metaphysical level, the level of narrative and myth, and the level of ritual and action. Level of action is the level of ritual, of liturgical practice, and also of meditation as ritual act.
