Mūrti and the Sacred Image

Lessons 22 to 26 dealt with which forms the divine is held to take. This one deals with what happens when a form is made of stone.

Open the standard Sanskrit lexicon at mūrti and the order of senses is itself informative.

The first is "any solid body or material form" — with a note that in the plural it means material elements, solid particles, and that as the end of a compound it means consisting of. The second is "embodiment, manifestation, incarnation, personification". The third is the technical one: "anything which has definite shape or limits" — and the entry adds, in philosophical use, that this covers mind and the four elements earth, air, fire and water, but not ākāśa, ether.

"An image, idol, statue" comes fourth, cited to poetry.