On the ninth day of Navaratri, people in many parts of India clean the tools of their trade, from machines and vehicles to books and musical instruments, mark them with sandalwood paste and vermilion, and set them out for worship. Ayudha Puja means ‘worship of tools’: one day a year to honour the things people work with.
Record, Folk and Modern are kept apart, and each one carries its source.
Our sources do not yet include an early text or object that describes Ayudha Puja, so we give no date for its beginning. What we can show is a living custom, described below.
To verify: An early text or inscription that describes the worship of tools at Navaratri; Early descriptions cited by Wikipedia that we have not read: Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg’s Genealogy of the South-Indian Gods (English edition, 1869) and F. Kittel’s Kannada–English Dictionary
Ayudha Puja falls on the ninth day of Navaratri, in September or October. The things people work with, a soldier’s weapons, an artisan’s tools, a student’s books, are cleaned and polished, marked with turmeric, sandalwood paste and kumkum (vermilion), decked with flowers and worshipped on the morning of the ninth day. On the day of the puja they are not to be disturbed; in Kerala they are taken back for use when the festival closes. A note in a 1963 sociology volume describes the day, in Karnataka, as the worship of whatever tools people use to earn their living.
To verify: The 1963 note in its own words (we have only Wikipedia’s quotation)
Today computers, typewriters and mobile phones are set out in the same way as the older tools. Ayudha Puja is part of a living Hindu festival. We tell it as a day when people honour the things they earn their living with, from a hammer to a book, and we make no promise about anyone’s work. We do not sell anything made for the puja.
