- What is the importance of celebrating temple festivals every year?
- What is the concept behind this celebration?
- Does any scriptures/texts include rules to be followed in temple festivals?
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1 Answer
Temples can be categorized into 4 types,
- Swayambhu: God emerged himself.
- Deva pratistitha: One god's murthi/idol installed by other god/gods.
- Rushi pratisthitha: Murthi was installed by a Rushi
- Manusha pratisthitha: Murthi was installed by human being
Based on type of installation of murthi, each murthi will have certain amount of power. Each of these murthis may have been installed for different purposes. At auspicious timings, this power gets multiplied. Hence the one who takes darshan of the murthi will get more benefited. One may (un)consciously and conveniently spend more time at temple at the festivals in the account of different sevas/services offered to god.
Temples protect our culture, through the dharmic and spiritual activities by the haves, have-nots will get benefited and since it is done at temple, others will get motivated and will be promoted from within to do such activities (hence they will do within their limitations or will do when they have). This is how moral values for next generation is passed.
Through the classical arts like singing, dancing or drama one can easily understand the morals set by our ancestors from vedic times. One can easily understand how gods responds to devotees call. For these reasons, our ancient temples are very spacious to accommodate thousands of devotees and pilgrims.
Temple festivals serve the very same purpose. On the top of general festivals, on murthi installation muhurtha of every year is celebrated. Atleast for this reason, we all assemble at temple to perform different sevas and dharmic activities.
