Vishnu

Deity

Vishnu · विष्णु

Vishnu is the preserver, and the form most often shown is not standing but reclining: Narayana asleep on the coils of Shesha on the ocean of milk, with Lakshmi at his feet. The conch, the discus, the mace and the lotus are his four attributes, and Garuda is his vahana.

He is worshipped chiefly through his avatars — Rama and Krishna above all — and the dashavatara counts ten, from the fish that carried the first man clear of the flood to Kalki, who has not yet come. The Satyanarayan Katha, read at home after a move, a birth or a vow kept, is a Vishnu rite: five chapters, a sankalpa, and sooji halwa as prasad.

Tulsi is his leaf. A tulsi plant kept in the courtyard is watered and circled rather than merely grown, and no offering to Vishnu is complete without a leaf of it — which is also why the plant is never cut on Ekadashi.

The Char Dham are the four abodes at the compass points of India: Badrinath in the north, Dwarka in the west, Puri in the east and Rameswaram in the south. The 108 Divya Desam are the temples named in the Nalayira Divya Prabandham, the hymns of the twelve Alvar poets — 106 of them on earth, and two that are not.

• Char Dham
• 108 Divya Desam

Char Dham · चार धाम — Badrinath · Dwarka · Puri · Rameshwaram