The Kalasha As Temple Finial

A kalasha, in this architectural sense also called a temple finial, is the pot- or urn-shaped element that crowns the very summit of a Hindu temple tower, set above the amalaka on North Indian shikharas or at the highest point of a South Indian vimana. The form directly echoes the kalasha used throughout Hindu ritual generally, a water-filled pot, often topped with mango leaves and a coconut, that functions as an auspicious vessel in ceremonies ranging from weddings to temple consecration, so the architectural finial and the portable ritual object share both name and symbolic charge as containers of auspiciousness and abundance.

Made of stone in early and modest temples, kalasha finials on major temples are frequently cast or hammered in metal, commonly copper or a gold-gilded alloy, both for durability at such height and for the visual brilliance a metal finial gives the tower when seen catching sunlight from a distance. As the literal highest point of the entire temple structure, sitting directly above the garbhagriha at the opposite extreme of the building's vertical axis, the kalasha completes a continuous symbolic line running from the deity's image in the dark sanctum below up through the solid mass of the tower to this single bright vessel at its peak.