An urban Indian household in 2026 performs puja on a shelf in the kitchen, at a small altar in the corner of a bedroom, or in a purpose-built room in a larger flat. The material of that puja - the oil in the diya, the ghee for the fire, the incense, the tilak, the flowers, the cloth - arrives through a supply chain the household has almost no visibility into. Most of it is chosen by the shopkeeper. Almost none of it is chosen against the standards the classical texts on puja actually name.
This is not a religious complaint. It is a practical observation. And it is fixable - not by memorising Sanskrit texts, but by learning the small number of guidelines the shastras actually specify for the material of daily and occasional worship.
This essay is a plain-language primer, distilled from dharmashastra commentary and paddhati manuals, on what the classical texts prescribe, what they assume, and what they warn against. It is written for the modern Indian household - the working couple, the flat in Bengaluru, the retired parents in Kolkata, the young family in Guwahati - that wants to perform puja with the seriousness their grandparents did, without pretending the century has not passed.
What the shastras actually prescribe
Sanskrit ritual literature is large, and its prescriptions on samagri are scattered across many kinds of text - the Grihya Sutras, the Dharma Sutras, the Puranas, the sectarian Agamas, and later paddhati manuals compiled for specific regional traditions. There is no single "Book of Puja Rules". There are, however, five recurring principles that appear across almost every source. They are the operational guidelines.
One - specificity of ingredient. Each ritual step in the shodashopachara - the sixteen-step deity worship - names a specific offering. Padya is water for washing the feet, drawn ideally from a flowing source. Arghya is water for hospitality, held in a small vessel with a few named additions. Naivedya is food, prepared in specific vessels, in specific proportions of cooked and uncooked. The shastras are unusually precise about what. A generic substitute is a generic offering.
Two - purity of source. The recurring adjective in the classical prescriptions is shuddha - pure - and the recurring test is provenance. Milk is shuddha if it comes from an indigenous cow; water is shuddha if the source is known; oil is shuddha if it is pressed from a known seed by a known process. The texts are not naïve about adulteration; they specify provenance because they knew, then as now, that materials could be substituted along the chain.
Three - integrity of preparation. The shastras care not only what is offered but how it was prepared. Ghrta is shastra-sammat only when churned by Bilona - the classical hand-churning of cultured curd. Chandan is shastra-sammat only when stone-ground. Ashtagandha follows an eight-ingredient structure; anything with fewer or more is not ashtagandha by name. Preparation is not a shortcut item.
Four - absence of specified adulterants. The classical texts are explicit about what must not enter the ritual: leather (except in specifically named contexts), synthetic dyes had they been available (the closest classical prohibition is kritrima colour - artificial colour), materials from sick or heat-stressed cattle, and offerings prepared in copper vessels when the ritual specifies earthen (and vice versa). The absence-conditions are as authoritative as the presence-conditions.
Five - correspondence with the deity, the ritual and the calendar. Specific deities have specific preferences. Shiva accepts bel leaves and receives rudrabhisheka in milk; Lakshmi prefers lotus and yellow; Ganesha accepts durva grass and modaks. The shastras are precise about these correspondences. Substituting a marigold for the specified bel in a Rudrabhisheka is not a small deviation - it is a different ritual.
What the shastras assume without saying
Beyond the explicit prescriptions, there is a set of assumptions the classical texts take so completely for granted that they are almost invisible.
Local production. Ritual samagri, in the world the shastras were written for, was produced within a day's walk of the altar. The idea of a factory in Ahmedabad supplying puja material in Kolkata would have been inconceivable, not because of distance but because of loss of provenance. Every household in a Vedic village knew its ghee-maker, its garland-woman, its potter, its dhoop-roller. Provenance was not a marketing claim; it was the default.
Small batch. The shastras assume ritual materials are made in quantities small enough for a human being to watch each batch. Industrial production - the same dhoop formulation churning out of a machine ten thousand sticks an hour - is not a scale the classical texts anticipated. Nothing in the classical corpus authorises it.
Seasonal availability. The shastras assume that not everything is available at every moment of the year. Certain flowers are for certain festivals; certain grains are the offering for certain tithis; certain fruits are seasonal. A modern supply chain that offers everything year-round is convenient, but it is also decoupled from the calendar in which the classical prescriptions live.
A pandit at the centre. Almost every classical paddhati manual is written assuming a purohita - a family priest - who knows the household, its lineage, its deity, and its calendar. He is the one who curates the samagri, tests it, and decides what is shuddha for the particular ritual. The modern erosion of this role is the single largest departure from the classical assumption.
Translating this into decisions a modern household can make
The good news is that these five principles and four assumptions can be operationalised without a course in Sanskrit. Here is a working translation.
On ingredients: buy specific. When a supplier sells you "havan samagri" as a single ambiguous packet, ask what is in it, in class if not in weight. If the answer is generic, the material is generic. Seek suppliers who can name their components.
On source: ask where. For milk-derived offerings - ghee, panchgavya, gomay diyas - ask which cow, which breed, which region. If the answer is "indigenous cows from India", that is not an answer. If the answer is "Siri cattle raised in the Darjeeling foothills", that is one.
On preparation: prefer stone-ground, hand-rolled, small-batch. These are not aesthetic categories. They are the categories the classical texts describe. A modern supplier who advertises them is not being pretentious; they are describing the process the shastra assumes.
On absence: ask what the maker refuses to use. The refusals are the diagnostics. A serious dhoop maker refuses bamboo core. A serious kumkum maker refuses coal-tar dye. A serious ghee-maker refuses skim-milk reconstitution. If the maker's list of refusals is short or vague, the material is short or vague.
On correspondence: work with your pandit. For occasional and festival rituals, the correspondences are specific. Your pandit is trained in them - even if a modern city pandit does not consult a paddhati manual for every ritual, he knows what is right for the puja you are asking him to perform. Trust him. If your pandit tells you a specific flower or a specific grain is needed, do not substitute.
What this journal will and will not do
This journal will publish, over the next year, plain-language essays on the classical prescriptions for each of the eight modules of the framework - Sthapana & Shringar, Shuddhi, Yajna & Ahuti, Vastra, Shanti & Utsav, Prakriti, Upakaran, Yajman Vyavastha. Each essay will describe purpose and principle, explain the classical assumption, and give diagnostics for identifying material that meets the standard.
This journal will not publish recipes, ingredient ratios, or ageing durations for Gomini's own modules. The reason is not secrecy for secrecy's sake. It is that the ritual supply chain in India today is under active assault from mass-market operators who copy the aesthetic of authenticity without the substance of it. A published recipe becomes a copied recipe within a week; a copied recipe becomes a cheapened market within a year. The right way to defend the category is to teach diagnostic literacy - so that any household, any pandit and any retailer can judge material at the altar, not to have to rely on us to certify it.
Where Gomini stands in this story
Gomini's Gayatri Framework is composed against every principle in this essay. The specificity, the purity of source, the integrity of preparation, the absence of the classical adulterants, and the correspondence with deity and calendar are all built into the nine modules. Our partner pandits and retailers receive full composition transparency under partnership. On this public site we publish principle and refusal - because principle and refusal are what a considered household needs to make its own decisions.
If you have read this far, you have already done the harder half of the work. The rest is asking the shopkeeper the questions the classical texts assumed you would.
Provenance is not a certificate. It is a name, a foothill, and a date.
Related reading: How to identify authentic dhoop · Science and shastra of panchgavya
Related pages: The Framework · Provenance