Evening Ganga Aarti

What is aarti?

Aarti is a Hindu ritual in which light is offered in an act of worship. In Varanasi, evening Ganga Aarti venerates the river and has become one of the most visible recurring ceremonies on the riverfront.

The evening ceremony

At Dashashwamedh Ghat and other ghats, priests perform coordinated sequences using lamps and incense. Bells, conch shells, cymbals and recited or sung mantras contribute to the soundscape. Multi-tiered brass lamps create the large arcs of fire seen in the archive’s evening photographs.

Ritual and public gathering

The ceremony is devotional practice, but it is also a major public gathering viewed from the steps and from boats on the river. The scale of the audience does not erase the religious purpose of the ritual, and the archive should avoid presenting it merely as spectacle.

The 2014 photographs

The archive records one evening ceremony through a sequence of gestures, lamps and changing intensity. A single photograph cannot explain the full ritual. The website therefore uses the images as documentary moments and keeps the explanatory text alongside, rather than inside, the photographs.