Panchayatana puja(“the worship of the five shrines”) is the Smarta practice — traditionally attributed to Adi Shankara — of honouring five deities together on a single altar: Shiva, Vishnu, Devi, Surya and Ganesha. By worshipping the one Brahman through five forms at once, the devotee keeps a beloved chosen deity at the heart of practice while remaining free of sectarian narrowness.
The five deities
The five are the heads of the five great devotional traditions of classical Hinduism. Together they are sometimes called the pancha-devata — five forms through which the whole of the divine can be approached in a single household shrine.
Shivathe auspicious · Shaiva
The great ascetic and lord of dissolution, worshipped as the formless absolute and as the linga. He represents the still, transcendent ground of all that is.
Vishnuthe preserver · Vaishnava
The all-pervading sustainer who descends as the avatars to uphold dharma. He represents grace, order and the loving maintenance of the world.
Devi (Shakti)the Mother · Shakta
The Goddess as the dynamic power (shakti) by which everything moves and lives — Durga, Lalita, Parvati. She represents the active, energising aspect of the one reality.
Suryathe sun · Saura
The radiant solar deity, source of light, life and the daily Gayatri. He represents the visible face of the divine and the witnessing inner light.
Ganesharemover of obstacles · Ganapatya
The elephant-faced lord invoked first in every rite, who clears the path and grants beginnings. He represents auspicious commencement and the smoothing of the way.
The five arrangements
The five forms are set out as a quincunx — one at the centre, four at the corners. The arrangement is named for whichever deity occupies the centre, and that central place is given to the worshipper's own ishta-devata (chosen deity); the remaining four take the corners. A Shaiva family thus keeps Shiva at the heart of the altar, a Vaishnava family Vishnu, and so on — the same five deities, simply re-centred for each devotee.
Shiva-panchayatana
Shiva at the centre, with Vishnu, Devi, Surya and Ganesha at the four corners. Followed by those whose ishta-devata is Shiva.
Vishnu-panchayatana
Vishnu at the centre, the other four around him. The arrangement of devotees centred on Vishnu.
Shakti-panchayatana (Devi-panchayatana)
Devi at the centre, surrounded by Shiva, Vishnu, Surya and Ganesha. For worshippers of the Mother.
Surya-panchayatana
Surya at the centre, the other four at the corners. The configuration of the Saura devotee.
Ganapati-panchayatana
Ganesha at the centre, ringed by Shiva, Vishnu, Devi and Surya. For those whose chosen deity is Ganesha.
The aniconic stones
In the traditional form, the five are represented not by figural images but by five naturally occurring aniconic stones and symbols — objects considered self-manifest (svayambhu) and so requiring no formal consecration. Briefly, the customary set is:
ShivaBana-linga
A naturally smooth ovoid stone from the Narmada (Omkareshwar) riverbed, representing Shiva aniconically as the linga.
VishnuShaligrama
A black, often spiral-marked ammonite fossil-stone from the Gandaki river in Nepal, revered as a self-manifest form of Vishnu.
DeviSvarna-mukhi stone
A reddish stone (a gold-flecked or swarnamukhi-river stone) representing the Goddess.
SuryaCrystal / sphatika
A clear quartz crystal (sphatika), fitting for the deity of light.
GaneshaRed sonbhadra / svarna-bhadra stone
A reddish stone from the Sone (Sonbhadra) river representing Ganesha.
The two most universally honoured of these — the bana-linga for Shiva and the shaligrama for Vishnu — are kept in countless homes to this day, with or without the full set of five. Exact stones and their placements vary by regional and family custom.
Why Shankara established it
The Smarta tradition credits Adi Shankara (8th century, by the usual dating) with regularising this fivefold worship. Whatever its precise origins, its purpose in the Smarta synthesis is consistent and clear:
To unify the sampradayas
By the early medieval period the major devotional streams — Shaiva, Vaishnava, Shakta, Saura, Ganapatya — had hardened into separate, sometimes rival sects. Setting all five on one altar is a deliberate gesture of integration: no household need belong to only one camp.
To end deity-rivalry
Placing the five together, with any one of them honoured at the centre, dissolves the question of which god is “highest.” Each devotee keeps their own beloved form at the heart of worship while honouring the others, so devotion deepens without contempt for another's path.
To point to the one reality behind all forms
For the Advaita vision Shankara taught, the five deities are not five competing gods but five faces of a single non-dual Brahman (saguna, with form, for the sake of worship). Panchayatana puja makes that teaching tangible on the altar: many forms, one truth.
Educational overview. The attribution to Adi Shankara is the traditional Smarta account; the precise stones, their river-sources and their corner-placements differ between regional and family practice. Consult a learned priest or your family's own paddhati for the exact procedure.