MŪRTI. According to many Hindu religious traditions, mūrti is a god's form, its infinite metaphysical reality manifested visibly. Aside from a limited class of objects called svayambhū (self-created or natural), mūrtis are mainly anthropomorphic figures or symbols. They are the ritually consecrated cult images at the center of pūjā (worship), which is the dominant form of Hindu religious practice.

In Vedic sacrifice the deity is unseen, being represented only by the chanted mantras of the priests as they move among the abstract geometric forms of the altars that represent the cosmos. The deity's form first emerges in the practice of the orthodox tradition with the later, theistic Upaniṣads, where a vision of the mūrti of the personalized deity is summoned through meditation. In the epics, image worship is mentioned and accepted, but it is...