A lamp burning clarified butter or oil, offered before an image in Tibetan temples in rows of hundreds, and in Hindu and Jain worship as the diya. The offering of light is standard across the Indian traditions, and the accompanying explanation is standard too: light for the dispelling of ignorance, and the flame as a thing that gives itself away without diminishing.
Lamps are lit for the dead, for the sick and at festivals, and Diwali is named for a row of them. Vegetable ghee has displaced yak butter in much of Tibetan practice, and electric lamps have displaced both in a good many temples, to some objection.
Facts
Use
Who May Handle ItAdherents of the tradition 1 ConsecrationNot consecrated; an instrument, not a consecrated object 1 Physical Form
MaterialBrass, silver, clay; clarified butter or oil 1 Material (class) Attributions
TraditionTibetan Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism 1 Learn More
The Lamp of Clarified Butter
The butter lamp is a lamp burning clarified butter or oil, offered before an image, and the offering of light is one of the most widespread acts of devotion across the traditions of India and the Himalayas.
Light as offering
In Tibetan temples the lamps are offered in rows of dozens or hundreds before the images, their massed flames a standing offering of light, and in Hindu and Jain worship the lamp appears as the diya, waved before the deity in the rite of arati or floated on water and set out in great numbers at the festival of lights. The flame signifies the dispelling of the darkness of ignorance by the light of wisdom, and the offering of it is an act of honour and of merit, so the same simple object carries a common meaning across several traditions.
A shared devotion
That the butter lamp and the oil lamp recur across Tibetan Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism, with closely related meanings, reflects a shared devotional vocabulary of the Indian religious world, in which the offering of light before the sacred is a basic and ancient act. The lamps are tended and kept burning as a continuous offering in many temples, the replenishing of them a daily labour of devotion, and the sponsoring of lamps is a common way for the laity to make an offering. The object is humble, but the offering of light it performs is among the most universal and most legible acts of worship in these traditions.
Why Butter Was the Costly Choice, and What Has Replaced It
A butter lamp is a simple bowl of brass, silver or plain clay holding a wick, usually twisted cotton, standing in a pool of fuel, and the fuel itself is the more significant choice than the bowl, since clarified yak butter was, in Tibet, a genuinely costly offering rather than a cheap one.
Why butter mattered as an offering
Offering food value, rather than a token gesture, was part of the point, a household or monastery burning butter was burning something with real nutritional worth, which is precisely why it counted as a meaningful act of generosity rather than an empty ritual gesture. Vegetable oil has become the common substitute in most practice today, both cheaper and, for some Western dharma centers, preferred on animal welfare or vegan grounds, a change in material that has not changed the act's meaning.
Who lights them, and their upkeep
Any devotee may light a butter lamp as a merit generating act with no ordination required, though monasteries maintain large banks of continuously burning lamps that are tended by monks assigned specifically to keep them filled and their wicks trimmed rather than left to gutter out. A lamp allowed to smoke or die out uncared for is considered poor practice, so the tending itself, not just the lighting, is part of the offering.
Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Butter lamps are the standard offering of light in Tibetan temples, and the offering is counted in lamps rather than in time.
Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers
Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)
Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)
Element Of
Rows of lamps burning clarified butter are offered before an image, and the offering is one of the commonest lay acts in the tradition.
Implement Of
Aarti, Rituals Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)
Sources
1. The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism
Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr., Princeton University Press, 2014on the offering of lightView the Source Encyclopedia of Hinduism
Denise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.), Routledge, 2008on the lamp in Indian worshipView the Source Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism
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