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Prayer or Pooja (Clickable List)
The way a pooja is performed varies depending on ones family, regional and traditional back ground. There is nothing like correct or wrong method. Do a pooja as per ones capability and convenience (Yatha shakti). Doing it with faith is what really matters.
Rituals/Ceremonies are to assist us and make our life/events enjoyable. We should not become slaves to rituals.
  1. Click for Universal Prayer
  2. Click for one hour Group Prayer
  3. Vinayagar - Knowledge, Remover of Obstacles, Starting point
  4. Shankara Ramanuja Madhwa Gurus
  5. Muruga - Youth, Perfection, Beauty
  6. Siva Universal Father, Auspicious, Life force
  7. Nataraja - Cosmic Dancer, Rythm or Universe
  8. Sivayogi Dakshinamurthy Siddhas
  9. Rudra - Storm, anger, destroyer
  10. Vishnu - Infinite, Sustainer, Yoganithrae
  11. Venkatesa - God for kali yuga to remove sins, Srinivasa
  12. Satyanarayana - Truth, Dharma
  13. Narasimha - Power/energy
  14. Rama - Ideal King, Perfect human
  15. Krishna - Wisdom, Love, Teacher
  16. Vishnu sahasranama
  17. Vishnu sahasranama sloka form (+additions)
  18. Uma Parvathi - Purity, Austerity
  19. Durga - Invincible, power, fierceness
  20. Lakshmi - Wealth, Prosperity
  21. Vara Lakshmi Pooja
  22. Vani/ Sharada - Knowledge, Music, Education
  23. Sri Vidya - Sri Chakra
  24. Lalitha - Perfection, happiness
  25. Lalitha - sahasranama sloka form
  26. Navarathri or Devi or Bagawathi prayer
  27. Ayyappa - Social reformer, Teacher, Leader
  28. Brahma - Vedic knowledge, creator
  29. Dattatreya - Philosopher
  30. Hanuman - Devotion, Courage
  31. Navagraha - solar system, astro-nature
  32. Deepam Jyothi Light Deepavali-Kritika-Vishaka
  33. Arogya - Health
  34. Bheej mantras
  35. Short Nama Pooja for Major deities
  36. Guru: Kanchi Paramacharya

    Rituals

  37. Santhyavandanam
  38. Tarpanam - Simple Srardham
  39. Simple Pithru ancestor Pooja
  40. Upakarma
  41. Sankranthi
  42. Birthday
  43. Marriage
  44. House warming
  45. About Pooja Formalities
  46. Note on rituals

    Tools - Aids:

  47. Current Year Panchangam for NZ
  48. Panchangam for any month or year
  49. New Year- Putthandu-Vishu Pooja

This Web site background

Hinduism is not just a religion, but collection of many beliefs, rites, ceremonies, customs, traditions and cultures. Hinduism is an Indian way of life based upon teachings of many sages/wise men.
All sects believe in Universal God or Brahman. Brahman is: formless; infinite; neither male nor female; and eternal. God is beyond space and time, and it is the source of consciousness. The goal of Hinduism is to wake up and realize our connection with the absolute reality Brahman.
Despite having the abstract concept of Brahman, Hindus worship the God in personal forms (deities) every day. Each deity is a manifestation of Brahman and symbolizes one particular aspect of Brahman. Plurality is encouraged.
One can have kuladeivam (family deity), local deity, state deity, and Ishta devada (personal deity).
One understands the Supreme Being through Devas (natural forces and objects like mountains and rivers and super beings); Rishis (teachers, heroes, great personalities and prophets); and pithrus (ancestors).

Let us avoid arguing about the existence of God and try to prove/disprove related theories. It will lead to nowhere. The concept of Universal law/Creator/Supreme reality are to answer basic questions, why and how we are here. All belief systems started when people started questioning the world and the universe around them.
There is Great Super power with in us. (நம்மையும் மீறிய சக்தி ஒன்று உண்டு. அதுவும் நமக்குள்ளேயே இருக்கின்றது)
Prayer is a way to communicate with Super power or Supreme reality with in us. Reciting is talking to GOD, who is every where.

Why Prayer

  • Many times Prayer solves one’s problems or shows the way to come out of that problem. It has offered many, the courage to withstand that problem.
  • Prayer is the easiest way to communicate with infinite power or energy source or THE ULTIMATE of everything
  • God knows what, when and how to do.
  • One may not get what asked, but certainly will get what needed.
  • Objective is not to lead a problem free life, but stress free life. Pleasure and pain; well health and ill health; prosperity and poverty; successes and failures; rising and falling; birth and death; and union and separation are all different shades of our life which every life form should accept. When there is pleasure, there will be also pain.
  • A prayer full of belief is an antidote to a pain full of sorrow.
  • Believe - Trust - Have complete faith in God, then all your wounds will heal and pains shall go. But not in time framed by you but in time decided by GOD!
  • Relationship with God is not a business one: We do something for God, so God can do something for us
A ritual is a set of actions, performed as per the traditions of a community. In a ritual or ceremony, many people meet. This interconnectedness encourages us to share the truth of our situation and share that experience with others.

External rituals are meant to create the internal visualization like offering a coconut into fire is symbolic of surrendering one's head or ego. Rituals are not universal, but may be similar. The method of performing the rituals slightly varies from region to region. But the essence of the ritual is the same.

God does not need our prayers or rituals, We need them. These activities will help us to build communities.

Gods/Goddesses represent nature or abstract concepts like learning, wealth and so on.

Effective Pooja for Saraswathi is to educate or provide skills to needy to make a living. To make illiterates literate.
Similarly Lakshmi pooja is to generate wealth for every one, so that poverty can be eradicated.


There may be more than few billion (100s of crores) slokas/poems/prayers as a part of hindu scriptures. Only few are popular. Bulk have been lost. Few types used in this site are:
  1. Mantra is a syllable, word, phonemes, or group of words believed to have powers
  2. Namah or names, ( or attributes of deity) - Ashtottara (108 Names) sahasranama (1008 Names); Namaḥ means 'I salute, adoration, pay respects'
  3. Shloka or sloka, meaning "song", a couplet. of two eight syllables. Stotra or Stotram a hymn addressed to Divinity, a request, a description, or a conversation. They are popular devotional literature and are not bound by the strict rules
  4. Sanskrit literary works are either in the form of gadyam (prose) or padyam (poetry). Gadyam is written in prose style with alternate long and short sentences with many adjectival phrases. Padyam is expressed in the form of verses and uses many metres. There are many gadyams going back to the time of AcArya RaamAnuja.
  5. There are numerous tamil collections like thevaram and thiruvasagam on ancient saivam, including kaumaram. Saiva hymns - 12 volumes as Tamil Marai (Veda). Pathikam (பதிகம்) are believed to be in sets of ten.
  6. Pasurams(Songs) a devotional or mystic poem, particularly applied to the Vaisnava Divyaprabandham sung by Alvars (between the 7th and 10th centuries CE). Vaishnavities called the Nalayira Divya Prabandham as Dravida Veda.
  7. A Suktam is a part or portion of Vedic verses in praise of a deity or group of deities to please accordingly, and to request benefits.
  8. 40 verse Chalisa (devotional song) for many deities developed during mughal era in Hindustani, adopted from many languages/dialects. For example Ganesha Chalisa adopted from Awadhi language.
Also many types of poems originating in many languages are included.
The way a pooja is performed also varies depending on ones regional and traditional back ground. Scriptures allow one to do a pooja “Yatha shakti” or as per ones capability and convenience. Doing it with faith is what really matters. The minimum is: Take bath, wear clean clothes, light a lamp and an incense stick and offer some prasad – whatever you have. If you prefer, keep an idol, picture or some symbol or a lamp.

Whom do we pray to or worship or pay respects

CategoryObject of worship or veneration or reverence
Physical Natural forces like Agni (fire); Varuna (water); Indra (rain). Super beings and objects like huge trees, mountains, powerful animals.
Great men, heroes, prophets, ancestors
Mental or abstract We are sure all this exists, but can not be described in terms of physical laws. Life force (prana), consciousness in the individual; Mental states like happiness, anger; Satyam (truth), Laxmi (wealth), Saraswathi (Knowledge), Yama (death)
Unknown or beyond explanation Spirits (ancestors and other natural); soul (atma); creator of the universe (Paramatma); [Prayer: "God if there is one, save my soul if there is any"]

The website uses Unicode for encoding tamil characters, as many of the existing schemes are limited in size and scope and are incompatible with multilingual environments. The Unicode Standard, the latest version of Unicode consists of a repertoire of more than 109,000 characters covering 93 scripts. So, these web pages contains special characters and if your browser has not been configured properly for UNICODE, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols. For more information on this, visit:
unicode.org or Standard ISO/IEC 10646:2011

This prayer project started in 1996-97 by sharing prayers electronically using geo cities web sites. Panchanga program for NZ and some documents were used by auckland temple group, during 1997.
GeoCities was created by David Bohnett‎ and John Rezner in 1994.
There were font and display issues and UNICODE was in earlier stages of development. Now browser support for Indian languages is very good. Starting with few slokas/prayers, over time, many documents were added to this web site. For last 20 years, these prayer pages were hosted on dedicated private server.
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