A Hindu temple functions less like a congregational hall and more like a royal residence maintained on the deity's behalf, its daily rhythm structured around waking, bathing, dressing, feeding and, at day's end, putting the deity's image to rest, a cycle of care performed by trained priests, archakas, who alone may enter the garbhagriha and handle the image directly. Lay worshippers typically do not enter the innermost sanctum at all; devotion instead centers on darshan, the act of seeing and being seen by the deity's image from the mandapa hall or its threshold, an encounter understood as a genuine two way exchange of attention rather than passive viewing.
Temple worship, puja, involves offerings of light, water, flowers, food and incense presented to the image in a fixed sequence, and the food offered is afterward distributed to worshippers as prasad, food sanctified by the deity's contact with it. Major festivals bring the deity's image, or a separate processional utsava murti made specifically for the purpose, out of the sanctum and through the surrounding streets, extending the deity's presence and blessing beyond the temple walls to the wider community. Large historic temple complexes also functioned, and in many cases still function, as significant economic and social institutions in their own right, holding land, employing substantial staff, and supporting schools, kitchens and charitable distribution well beyond their purely ritual role.