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Hinduism:
 The product of several millennia of evolution and assimilation, Hinduism was the predominant religion gion in Goa long before the arrival otthristianity, and is today practised by two thirds of the region's population. Although underpinned by a plethora of sacred scriptures, it has no single orthodoxy, prophet, creed nor doctrine, and thus encompasses a wide range of different beliefs. Its central tenet is the conviction that human life is an ongoing series of rebirths and reincarnations (avatais) that eventually leads to spiritual release (moksha). An individual's progress is determined by karma, very much a law of cause and effect, where negative decisions and actions impede the process of upward incarnations, and positive ones, such as worship and charitable acts, accelerate It. A whole range of deities are revered, which on the surface can make Hinduism seem mind-bogglingly complex, but with a loose understanding of the Vedas and Puranas - the religion's most influential holy texts - the characters and roles of the various gods and goddesses become apparent (see box on pp. 254-255).
Castes in Hinduism:
 Temples
Religious life for Hindus revolves around the temple. Known as devuls or mandirs ("Houses of God") in Konkani, these sacred structures house the focal point of communal worship: the deity, or devta. Ranging from simple stones to solid-gold statues, cult objects are venerated not as mere symbols of divine power, but as actual embodiments of a particular god or goddess. The buildings in which they are enshrined also vary in scale and splendour according to how important the devta is: some are modest concrete affairs, while others are soaring multicoloured piles crammed full of finery.
The culmination of worship, or puja, is always the moment of darshan, or ritual viewing of the deity. After ringing a bell in front of the shrine, the worshipper steps forward, salutes the god or goddess (sometimes by prostrating him- or herself), and presents an offering of fruit, incense, flowers or money to the temple priest (pu/ari). They are then given a spoonful of holy water (tirtha) and prasad - food (usually a sugary bonbon) that has been blessed by the deity. Meanwhile, the bare-chested brahmin priests busy themselves with the dairy round of readings and rituals: waking bathing, dressing and garlanding the dewa, chanting Sanskrit texts, and smearing vermillion paste (ti/afc) on the foreheads of worshippers.
Non-Hindus are welcome to visit Goan temples, but you're expected to observe a few simple conventions. The most important of these is to dress appropriately: women should keep their shoulders and legs covered, while men should wear long trousers or lunghis. Always remove your shoes at the entrance to the main hall (not the courtyard), and never step inside the doorway to the shrine, which is strictly off limits to everyone except the pujdris. Photography is nearly always prohibited inside the temple but allowed around the courtyard. Finally, if there is a passage (pradakshena) encircling the shrine, walk around it in a clockwise direction.
 The Shri Manguesh Temple
Shri Manguesh mandir, 9km north of Ponda near the village of Priol, is one of the largest, wealthiest and most frequently visited temples in Goa. Its principal deity, a stone Shivalingam, was first brought here in the sixteenth century from its previous hiding place on the south bank of the Zuari River at Curtolim, although the present building was erected over two hundred years later. During the time of the Inquisition, devotees from the Old Conquests area used to creep across the Cambarjua Canal under cover of darkness to worship here, knowing that torture, imprisonment or even execution awaited them if caught.
Amid lush forest at the foot of a steep hillside, the temple is now approached in a more leisurely fashion via a raised walkway through waterlogged paddy fields - land given to the temple by the local rajah in the eighteenth century. A flight of steps, lined by flower and incense wallis, leads to the main entrance, overlooking a large water tank whose ornamental brickwork is picked out with whitewash. The courtyard inside, hemmed in by ugly modern argashallas (pilgrims' hostels) and offices, is dominated by a seven-storey deepmal, the most impressive lamp tower in Goa.
The temple itself, painted ochre, blue and white, is a kitsch concoction of Moghul-style domes, Baroque balustrades and pilasters piled around the sides of a grand octagonal sanctuary tower. Its principal deity, Shiva, in his beneficent form, Manguesh, presides over a silver shrine, flanked by a solid gold idol and lit by oil lamps.
Before you leave, pay your respects to the ancient stone devtas housed in the subsidiary shrines to the rear of the main building (from left to right: Lakshmi Narayan, Satiri and Mulkeshwar), and the gigantic ceremonial chariots (ralhs), put to use during the annual Zalra festival, which are stored in the northwest corner of the compound.
 The Shri Mahalasa Temple
Like Shri Manguesh, the Shri Mahalasa temple, 7km northwest of Ponda, originally stood in Salcete, but was destroyed in the sixteenth century during a siege by 'Adil Shah's Muslim army after a platoon of Portuguese soldiers had taken refuge in it. The deity survived, having previously been smuggled across the Zuari River to Mardol, where it was installed in a new temple. This has been rebuilt or renovated on several occasions since: the last time in 1993—95, when a shiny new mandapa, or pillared porch, was added and the courtyard paved with finest Karnatakan marble.
Crowned by rising tiers of red pyramidal roofs, the distinctly oriental Shri Mahalsa is noted for its fine woodcarvings, especially on the pillars supporting the eaves of the main mandapa, set above beauty fill floral panels. Inside, an ornate ceiling spans deeply carved and brightly painted images of Vishnu's ten incarnations, or avatars. The presiding deity here is Vishnu's consort, the black-faced Goddess Mahalsa (aka Lakshmi, Goddess of wealth and prosperity), who peers out from her silver shrine, swathed in red and yellow silk. Standing beside the seven-storey, pink- and white-painted deep-mal in the courtyard is an unusual brass lamp pillar. The column, erected in 1978, symbolizes the Hindu Aris Mundi, Mount Kailash, which the gods placed on the back of Vishnu's second incarnation, the tortoise Kurma (featured at the base of the pillar) prior to his epic plunge into the Primordial Ocean. The dive was performed to rescue all the treasures of the world lost in the Great Flood. When Kurma reached the bottom of the sea, a cosmic serpent was coiled around the mountain and then pulled, churning the oceans and forcing their contents to the surface. Among the goodies that came to light were a jar of immortality-giving nectar, the Amrit Samovar, and Vishnu's consort, Lakshmi. The Preserver's winged vehicle (vahana), the half-man half-eagle Garuda, crowns the top of the pillar, whose oil lamps are lit every Sunday evening.
West of the temple, a flight of steps drops down to a laterite-lined water tank, overlooked by a large sacred peepal tree. The opposite (east) gateway, leading from the courtyard to the main road, is surmounted by a pagoda-roofed musicians' gallery (naubhat khanna or sanddio), where the instruments used during Shri Mahalsa's pyjas, Sunday evening promenades and annual Zatra are stored.
 The Shri Lakshmi Narasimha Temple
Crouched on the side of a steep, densely wooded hill, the secluded Shri Lakshmi Narcenha mandir at Velinga, 3km southwest of Mardol, is one of the more picturesque temples around Ponda. To find it, turn west where the main highway begins its climb up to Farmagudi, and follow the road for 1500m until it reaches Velinga village. The path to the temple starts at the top of the grassy square, in the centre of which stands a modern concrete shrine.
Transferred here from Salcete in 1567, the Lakshmi-Narcenha devta housed inside this temple, a conventional eighteenth-century structure surrounded by neat lawns and pilgrims' hostels, is Vishnu in his fourth incarnation as the man-lion Narashima, aka Narayan. However, his shrine and the brightly painted assembly hall leading to it (lined with images of Vishnu's various avatars) are of less interest than the beautiful water tank at the far end of the courtyard. Fed by an eternal spring, this is fringed by a lush curtain of coconut palms, and entered (from the opposite side) via a grand ceremonial gateway. Its stepped sides, used by locals as communal bathing- and dhobirghats, are ornamented with rows of Islamic-arched niches. The squat tower behind is a musicians' gallery.
 The Shri Naguesh Temple
From the main intersection at Farmagudi, dominated by a statue of the Maharatha leader Shivaji, a narrow back road winds sharply down the sides of a shattered valley, carpeted with cashew trees and dense thickets of palms, to the. Shri Naguesh temple at Bandora, 4km northwest of Ponda. If you are working your way north, note that this temple can also be approached via the road that starts opposite the Shri Shantadurgamandir near Quela.
Established at the beginning of the fifteenth century and later renovated by the Maharathas, Shri Naguesh is older than most of its neighbours, although stylistically very much in the same mould, with the usual domed shikhara, or terracotta-tiled roofs, and gaudy Goan decor. Lying in its entrance porch is a stately black Nandi bull, vehicle of the temple's chief deity, Shiva, here known as Naguesh. Once inside, your eye is drawn to the multicoloured wood-carvings that run in a continuous frieze along the tops of the pillars. Famous all over Goa, these depict scenes from the Hindu epic Rarnayana, in which the God Rama (Vishnu's seventh incarna-tion), with the help of Hanuman's monkey army, rescues his wife Sita from the clutches of arch demon Ravana. After the great battle, the couple are reunited back home in Ayodhya, as shown in one of the last panels. The silver-doored sanctum (garbhagrihd), flanked by subsidiary shrines dedicated to Lakshmi-Narayan (left) and the elephant-headed Ganesh (right), houses a Shiva devta. If you're lucky, you may see it flooded with holy water - a costly ritual performed to cure sickness. Opening onto the courtyard are a couple of accessory shrines. The one on the south side harbours a lingam carved with the face of Shiva - a rare form of the god known as Mukhaling. The temple tank, whose murky green waters are teeming with fish, is also worth a look, if only to hunt for the donatory inscription (on the wall beside the steps) recording the foundation of the temple in 1413.
 The Shri Shantadurga Temple
Standing with its back to a wall of thick forest and its front facing a flat expanse of open rice fields, Shri Shantadurga is Goa's largest and most famous temple, and the principal port of call on the region's Hindu pilgrimage circuit. Western visitors, however, may find its heavily European-influenced architecture less than exotic, and barely worth the detour from Ponda, 4km northeast. If you are pushed for time, skip this one and head straight for the temples further north at Mardol and Priol.
From the row of souvenir and cold drink stalls along the roadside, steps lead to Shri Shantadurga's main entrance and courtyard, enclosed by offices and blocks of modern pilgrims' hostels, and dominated by a brilliant-white six-storey deepmal. The russet- and cream-coloured temple, crowned with a huge domed sanctuary tower, was erected by the Maharatha Chief Shivaji's grandson, Shahu Raja, in 1738, some two centuries after its presiding deity had been brought here from Quelossim in Mormugao taluka, a short way inland from the north end of Colva Beach.
The interior of the building, dripping with marble and glass chandeliers, is dominated by an exquisitely worked silver screen, embossed with a pair of guardian deities (dwarpalas). Behind this sits the garlanded Shantadurga devi, flanked by images of Vishnu and Shiva. According to Hindu mythology, Durga, another name for Shiva's consort, Parvati, the Goddess of Peace, resolved a violent dispute between her husband and rival God Vishnu, hence her position between them in the shrine, and the prefix Shanta, meaning "peace", that was henceforth added to her name.
After paying their respects to the Goddess, worshippers generally file along the passage leading left to the subsidiary shrine where Shantadurga sleeps. Also worth a look before you leave are the devi's colossal raths; during the annual February Zatra festival held here, these elaborately carved wooden chariots are pulled around the precinct by teams of honoured devotees.
 The Shri Ramnath temple
Thanks to the garishly outsize entrance hall tacked onto it in 1905, the Shri Ramnath temple, 500m north up the lane from Shri Shantadurga, is the ugly duckling of Ponda's monuments. The only reason you'd want to call in here is to view the opulently decorated silver screen in front of the main shrine, the most extravagant of its kind in Goa. Brought from Lutolim in Salcete taluka in the sixteenth century, the lingam housed behind it is worshipped by devotees of the Shaivite and Vaishnavite sects of Hinduism, Shri Ramnath being the form of Shiva propitiated by Lord Rama before he embarked on his mission to save Sita from the clutches of the evil Ravana.
Khandepar
Hidden deep in dense woodland near the village of KHANDEPAR, 5km northeast of Ponda on the NH4, is a group of four tiny freestanding rock-cut cave temples, gouged out of solid laterite some time between the ninth and tenth centuries AD. They are among Goa's oldest historical monuments but are also virtually impossible to find without the help of a guide or knowledgeable local: ask someone to show you the way from the Khandepar crossroads, where the buses from Ponda pull in.
Set back in the forest behind a slowly meandering tributary of the Mandovi River, the four caves each consist of two simple cells hewn from a single hillock. Their tiered roofs, now a jumble of weed-choked blocks, are thought to have been added in the tenth or eleventh centuries, probably by the Kadambas, who converted them into Hindu temples. Prior to that, they were almost certainly Buddhist sanctuaries, occupied by a small community of monks. Scan the insides of the caves with a torch (watching out for snakes), and you can make out the carved pegs used for hanging robes and cooking utensils; the niches in the walls were for oil lamps. The outer cell of cave one also has lotus medallions carved onto its ceiling, a typically Kadamban motif that was added at roughly the same time as the stepped roofs.
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