A purohit performs the life-cycle and domestic rituals, samskaras, that mark a Hindu household's significant occasions, including birth ceremonies, the sacred thread investiture, upanayana, for boys in some communities, marriage, and death and memorial rites, a role requiring accurate recitation of Sanskrit mantras and detailed knowledge of the specific procedural sequence each ceremony requires, together with the astrological calculation, jyotisha, often used to determine an auspicious date and time, muhurta, for major life events such as weddings. Purohit families have traditionally served particular client households across multiple generations, a hereditary professional relationship passed down within specific Brahmin lineages alongside the ritual knowledge itself, though today many families engage a purohit through a temple or a more informal, non-hereditary professional arrangement rather than through a fixed generational family relationship.
The purohit's role is distinct from that of a pujari, who conducts ongoing worship at a temple's own deity image, since a purohit's work centers specifically on a household's own life-cycle events rather than on daily or periodic temple ritual, though a single individual may in practice perform both functions depending on local custom and the specific religious economy of a given community.