Linking Ancient and Modern, A Worldwide Web of Worship

The site now gets about 100,000 visits a year and about 200 orders each month, the company says. Most customers buy pujas to pray for sick relatives, to ease marital or financial problems -- or even, in the case of some Indians living in the United States, to help get a green card.

According to Mohanan and Jose, Saranam limits its advertising and marketing to avoid offending users who visit the site for serious religious purposes. "We can't say 'Winter Sale!' or things like that, because it would damage our credibility," Jose said. But it does use a time-honored promotional technique of posting articles written about it, including a news service account that appeared in The Washington Post.

At first, most of the customers came from the 20 million or so Indians who live overseas. But now most are Americans, Europeans and people from the Middle East who have become interested in Hinduism, at least in part because of information available on the Internet.

Shaunaka Rishi Das, director of the Center for Hindu Studies at Oxford University, said Hindus traditionally give little formal religious instruction to children, who learn largely from family tradition.

Now the Internet is allowing many Hindus to learn about their religion in depth for the first time.

"Hindus have jumped on this technology," he said.

Filling the Order

A few weeks after Kumararajah ordered her puja in London, 5,000 miles away in the 92-degree southern Indian sun, T.K. Jayaraaman walked barefoot into Sri Rangam, a 156-acre complex of 21 towers decorated with colorful and ornate carvings.

The retired schoolteacher, 65, is the local contact for Saranam.com. When someone orders a puja at a temple here in Trichy, as this city is known, the people at Saranam call him and ask him to arrange it; he has handled scores of orders in the past couple of years. Now he was here to take care of Kumararajah's, on her star date, Feb. 27.

Jayaraaman walked past a buzzing hive of vendors near the temple gate, where ancient meets modern: Three-wheeled motorized rickshaws compete for space with Mercedes buses full of tourists; an elderly woman weaves traditional Hindu floral garlands from sweet-smelling jasmine, while a more tech-savvy hawker approaches tourists, saying, "Mister -- digital camera memory stick?"

Wearing a sarong-like garment wrapped around his waist, Jayaraaman walked through the main gate of the temple, a 236-foot-high structure with ornate carvings in soft pastel blues, pinks and greens. He moved through the dark, shady places where scores of pilgrims were escaping the broiling midday sun by lying on the cool stone worn smooth by a millennium of use, and approached a line of fruit vendors.

He bought a small basket with a coconut, two bananas, a few sprigs of basil and some flowers for the equivalent of about 50 cents. He carried the plate of fruit to a barefoot priest, who cracked the coconut open for him -- opening it loudly in the presence of the reclining god is considered rude.