The day of the pran pratishtha of the idol at Ayodhya’s Ram temple is coming closer. The pran pratishtha ceremony will be held on January 22, and various rituals will begin from January 16.

While the basic meaning of pran pratishtha — giving life to the idol — is simple enough, the ceremony involves various rituals taken from the Vedas and Puranas, each with its own significance.

So what exactly is pran pratishtha, and how is it carried out? How can the worshipper impart prana, or life, to the worshipped? The answers lie in the strong role nature plays in many Hindu rituals, and the interdependence of the devotee and the divine in the Hindu worldview.

Pran prathistha is the act which transforms an idol into a deity, giving it the capacity to accept prayers and grant boons. For this, the statue has to go through various stages. Here we describe some of the prominent steps. The number of steps involved will depend on the scale of the ceremony.

One of the first stages is a shobha yatra, or a procession of the idol, taken out in the neighbourhood of the temple. For the Ram idol in Ayodhya, the shobha yatra is on January 17. During this yatra, as the idol is greeted and cheered on by onlookers, some of their devotion is transferred into it, imbuing it with devotion and divine strength. It is, thus, the devotee who begins the alchemy of turning a statue into God.

Dr. Sunder Narayan Jha, professor at the Department of Veda at the Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri National Sanskrit University, New Delhi, said to IndianExpress when the mantra is chanted for pran pratishtha, the prayer is both for the idol to come to life and to be prepared to give up that life. “This is because, in case that particular statue is damaged, another will have to be installed in its place, and life should flow from the damaged idol to the new one,” he explained.