[Advaita-l] Panchayatana Puja

[jaldhar at braincells.com]

In the course of researching Shiva puja, another question came to mind.

One of the hallmarks of Smarta sampradaya is that while we may prefer one 
particular swarupa of Brahman as our Ishtadevata, we do not use that as 
an excuse to neglect the others.  Shankaracharya formalized this idea in 
the Panchayatana form of Puja where all the major Vedic forms, Shiva, 
Vishnu, Devi, Ganesh, and Surya (and Skanda in TN) are worshipped together 
with one in particular as the focus.

The Shiva panchayata is most often described in prayoga books. And I have 
also found the vidhi for Vishnu panchayata but what of the others?  Devi 
upasakas seem to prefer worshipping Shri or other yantras rather than Devi 
panchayata and the Surya and Ganapati variants seem to be purely 
theoretical.  Does any reader know of anyone historical or contemporary 
who performs any of these forms?

-- 
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>