Robots are performing Hindu rituals – not all worshippers are happy about it
In 2017, a technology firm in India introduced a robotic arm to perform “aarti,” a ritual in which a devotee offers an oil lamp to the deity to symbolize the removal of darkness.
Ritual automation is not new:
Thaneswar Sarmah, a Sanskrit scholar and literary critic,
appeared in the stories of King Manu, the first king of the human race in Hindu belief.
Folklorist
that religious stories about mechanized icons from Hindu epics, such as the mechanical war chariots of the Hindu engineer god Visvakarman, are often viewed as the progenitors of religious robots today. "
Hindu epics are full of AI, robots. Legend has it that they guarded Buddha's relics."
These stories are
evidence that ancient India has previously invented .
Automated rituals appear on a spectrum that progresses from human ritual fallibility to robotic ritual perfection. In short, the
robot can do your religion better than you can because robots, unlike people, are .