Acoustics of two Hindu temples in southern India

Acoustically important aspects of Hindu worship include chants, bells, conch-shells, and gongs. Conch-shells and gongs are used at various times during puja rituals (Prasad and Rajavel, 2013), throughout which texts from the Vedas and other Sanskrit scriptures are chanted. These Vedic chants have phonetic characteristics such as pitch, duration, emphasis, and uniformity (Beck, 1995; Prasad, 2013). Traditional methods of acoustic characterization (e.g., for churches) are based on time domain characteristics like reverberation time and clarity. We term this as, “time domain soundscape of worship.” This is vastly different from Hindu worship which involves extensive use of bells, conch-shells, and gongs in puja rituals, all of which produce unique sonic characteristics making frequency of sound very crucial which we term, “frequency domain soundscape of worship.” Beck (1995, 2006, 2012) has explored the sonic aspects of Hindu tradition as they relate to the religion and drawn comparisons with religious practices in other cultures where pertinent. However, a comprehensive acoustic analysis of temples and the characteristics of these sounds within temples is yet to be done. In this paper, we analyze the impulse responses and decay curves measured at the Virupaksha and Vijaya Vittala temples in Southern India.