The Shiva Sahasranama is a working liturgy. Its grandest hour is Maha Shivaratri, the great night of Shiva, when temples keep vigil through four watches and the names are chanted over the lingam as it is bathed in the continuous abhisheka of water, milk and honey, the litany measuring out the night. In daily temple practice the names supply the archana, the offering in which a priest recites name after name, each with the mantra formula om namah and each accompanied by a bilva leaf or flower laid on the lingam, the thousand names generating a thousand small offerings, and household devotion uses the litany the same way on Mondays, the day tradition assigns to Shiva. Alongside the full thousand stands a graded family of shorter forms, the ashtottara shatanamavali of one hundred and eight names for ordinary days, and the compact panchakshara mantra, om namah Shivaya, into which the whole litany is understood to condense, so a devotee moves between five syllables, a hundred names and a thousand as occasion allows.
Recordings of the Sahasranama in the great South Indian chanting styles circulate widely, and printed namavali booklets are standard temple stock. The litany's persistence makes the epic's frame story good sociology as well as good theology, the names Krishna learned from Upamanyu are still being counted out, leaf by leaf, every Monday.