Should installed deities be modified like toy dolls? Originally Mayapur Panchatattva deities were cast without eyelids and with large eyes. I am told that at some point Bhavananda didn’t like the eyes and complained they were too big. So he made them use M-Seal (a plumbing putty used for sealing leaks in pipes) to reshape the eyes and modify the deity.
Deities that have been installed (through prana pratishtha) and sculpted by traditional Vedic processes shouldn’t be treated like toys and physically modified based on the whims of ordinary people. Just because someone has personal likes and dislikes, he has changed the form of the deity, which is not done in any temple in India ever.
In South India there are many temples where the utsava deities have been worn away from thousands of years of abhishekam and you cannot see any face, it is just worn and flat. But no one will dare to modify those deities to try to make them “look good” for our eyes.
They have cast the deity in panchaloha so that it will stay for thousands of years, but then they modify it with M-Seal putty which will crack in 3 years. What is the logic behind their thinking?
