Aarti Sangrah: Hindu Aarti Collection with Lyrics, Meaning & Benefits

An aarti is a short devotional song sung while a lit lamp is circled before the image of a deity, usually at the close of a puja. The word also names the act itself, the offering of light. A wick soaked in ghee or a piece of camphor is lit on a metal thali along with flowers, incense and a small bell, and the lamp is moved in slow clockwise circles while the verses are sung. Most aartis run to five or six stanzas with a refrain that the whole gathering repeats.

Every aarti guide opens with the complete lyrics in Roman transliteration for easy chanting, with the Devanagari line beneath it, followed by a plain-English meaning for each verse. Below that you will find who composed the aarti and when, the time of day it is traditionally sung, a step-by-step note on performing it, the benefits devotees associate with it, quick facts and a short set of questions and answers.

Temples usually keep two main aartis, one in the morning after the deity is bathed and dressed (mangala or prata aarti) and one at dusk (sandhya aarti), with larger temples adding a midday and a night aarti. At home the evening lamp is the most common, lit at sunset before the family shrine. Festival aartis follow the occasion instead, so the Ganesh aarti is sung through Ganesh Chaturthi and the Devi aartis through the nine nights of Navratri.

An aarti is a lamp-offering song, usually five or six verses long, sung at the end of worship while the flame is circled. A chalisa is a hymn of forty verses that praises a deity at greater length and is recited rather than tied to the lamp. The two often sit together in one sitting: devotees recite the chalisa first and close with the aarti. The full Chalisa Sangrah collects the forty-verse hymns.

Keep the shrine clean and light a ghee lamp or a camphor tablet on a small metal thali, adding incense, a flower and a little kumkum. Stand before the deity, ring the bell with the left hand and hold the thali in the right, then move the lamp in clockwise circles: three or four times at the level of the feet, twice near the navel, and once around the face and the whole form. Sing the aarti while you do this. At the end, pass your palms over the flame and touch them to your eyes, then share the flame with everyone present.

The aartis are listed alphabetically, 24 to a page. Use the numbered pagination under the grid to move to the next set. Every page has its own web address (for example /aarti/page/2/), so search engines can crawl and index each aarti in the collection.