Ritual worship in many, though not all, Hindu temples follows detailed procedural texts called agama shastras, which specify how the enshrined deity's image should be consecrated, bathed, dressed, fed, and worshipped through the day's cycle of rites, giving temple pujari duties a textually governed structure rather than leaving ritual practice purely to informal custom.
Larger temples, particularly major South Indian temples with elaborate daily ritual schedules, typically employ several pujaris who rotate through the different services of the day, from early morning waking rites through midday and evening worship to a final nighttime rite that closes the sanctum, work that in a major temple can amount to a demanding full time occupation requiring real physical stamina as well as ritual precision. Appointment practices vary by region: many South Indian temples have traditionally drawn pujaris from specific hereditary priestly lineages tied to that particular temple, a pattern that has been the subject of ongoing legal and administrative debate in some Indian states over whether hereditary appointment should give way to appointment based more directly on training and qualification, while temple administration in other regions has moved further toward centralized, government or trust managed appointment processes that place less weight on hereditary claims specifically.