Temples & sacred art.
Image as presence, place as practice.

Darśana means seeing, viewing or an auspicious encounter. In temple devotion, the worshipper beholds the deity and is beheld in return. A mūrti may be carved, cast, painted, temporary, aniconic or naturally manifested; ritual installation and continuing service distinguish a living sacred presence from a museum display.

• Do not photograph where a temple prohibits it.
• Ask before photographing worshippers, ritual or private shrines.
• Museum labels describe provenance, but cannot reproduce a temple relationship.

Architectural vocabularies vary by region, period and scholarly system. North Indian temples often foreground a curving śikhara above the sanctum; southern complexes may combine towered sanctums with monumental gopurams; Deccan forms cross and reinvent categories sometimes labelled Vesara.

• The garbhagṛha is the inner sanctum or ‘womb chamber’.
• Maṇḍapa names a pillared hall in many temple plans.
• Circumambulation, procession routes, tanks and landscape shape embodied experience.

Texts and hereditary workshops transmit systems of measure, gesture and attribute, while artists also respond to material, patron, place and regional style. Chola bronzes, Pāla stone, Odisha temples, Kerala murals, Rajasthani painting and village terracottas belong to different visual worlds.

• Iconography identifies; style and material locate historically.
• Multiple arms and heads visualise power, time or omnidirectionality.
• A damaged or displaced object carries a history that captions should name.

Sacred objects in museums may have moved through colonial collecting, excavation, sale, gift, theft or later restitution. Responsible display names the collecting history when known, links back to the holding institution and avoids treating living communities as scenery.

• Credit maker, community, date, place, collection and photographer where known.
• State when a work is contemporary interpretation rather than consecrated imagery.
• Use public-domain and openly licensed images according to their terms.