Hanuman temples
Every Hanuman temple in the directory, grouped by state.
A guide is written where we have one, and the temple is named where we do not. Bookable pujas appear where we have verified pandits in the temple's city.
Hanuman shrines are the most numerous in north India and the least monumental. The common form is small, roadside or at the edge of a settlement, with the image under a layer of sindoor and oil thick enough to obscure the carving beneath it — the coating is the offering, applied over years.
Many face south. A Dakshinmukhi Hanuman is placed to look toward the direction the tradition associates with Yama, and is installed for that reason rather than by accident of the plot.
The largest are modern. Mahavir Mandir at Patna, one of the busiest temples in eastern India, took its present form in the 1980s, and the tall standing images at Paritala and elsewhere are all of the last few decades. Age is not what makes a Hanuman temple important; footfall is.
A few are destinations in their own right. Sankat Mochan at Varanasi is attributed to Tulsidas, who is said to have had the vision that became the Ramcharitmanas there. Salasar and Mehandipur in Rajasthan draw people seeking relief from possession and are run accordingly, with their own discipline for visitors. Hanuman Garhi at Ayodhya is visited before the Rama temple rather than after it, on the reasoning that permission is asked of the servant first.
Tuesday and Saturday fill these temples the way Monday fills a Shiva temple. The offering is a laddu, a flag, or oil for the lamp, and at the larger shrines a chola — the fresh coat of sindoor and jasmine oil applied to the image, which is sold at the gate and applied by the priest rather than the visitor.
Temple collections
Hanuman
