From Daily Devotion to a Wider Symbol

Beyond its use as an everyday personal devotional mark, tilaka application is also a formal part of many Hindu life cycle rites and temple rituals, applied by a priest to worshippers as a blessing at the conclusion of temple puja, and given particular ceremonial prominence at weddings, initiations and other major samskaras, where the specific style and manner of application can carry additional ritual meaning beyond ordinary daily wear. The bindi, the decorative forehead mark widely worn by Hindu women, particularly in North India, and often today by women of any or no particular religious background purely as fashion or cultural adornment, developed from and remains historically related to tilaka practice even though the two have partly diverged in contemporary usage, the bindi frequently worn today without the specific sectarian religious signalling function tilaka proper carries, a divergence that has generated its own separate discussion, distinct from tilaka's more directly religious use, about the bindi's meaning as it has spread into secular fashion contexts both within India and, through diaspora and popular culture, considerably beyond it.