A garland is a decorative wreath or cord, used at festive occasions, which can be hung round a person's neck, or on inanimate objects like Christmas trees. Originally garlands were made of flowers or leaves.
In India, where flower garlands have an important and traditional role in every festival, the deities are decorated with garlands made from different fragrant flowers (often jasmine) and leaves. Both fragrant and non-fragrant flowers and religiously-significant leaves are used to make garlands to worship Hindu deities. Some of those flowers are as follows: jasmine, champaka, lotus, lillies, ashoka, nerium/oleander, chrysanthemum, roses, hibiscus, pinwheel flowers, manoranjitam etc.
Apart from these, leaves like maruvakam, davanam, maachi, paneer leaves, lavancha are also used for making garlands. Also fruit, vegetables and sometimes even currency notes are used for garlands, given as thanksgiving. Also in wedding the couple wears a wedding garland. In other occasions, it is used to show respect to an individual person or statue (murti).In Tamil Nadu marigold, nitya kalyani flower garlands are used only for dead bodies or burial rituals.In functions, garlands are used to denote the main person(host).
A Gajra is a flower garland which women in India and Bangladesh wear during traditional festivals. It is made usually of jasmine. It can be worn both on the bun and with the braid coiling. Women usually wear these when they wear sarees.
In Tamil Nadu temples (ancient)kings had appointed people for making garlands for that particular deity daily. They were not allowed to sell that garland.Each Hindu temple in southern India has nandavanam (floweral garden) where floral plants, trees for garlands are grown.
In srirangam ranganathar temple only garlands made by temple sattharars(people who make garlands and never marry - surrendering their life to the lords service )are used to adorn Lord Raganatha. No other garlands, flowers are used there.
Source: Wikipedia
This footage is part of the professionally-shot broadcast stock footage archive of Wilderness Films India Ltd., the largest collection of HD imagery from South Asia. The Wilderness Films India collection comprises of tens of thousands of hours of high quality broadcast imagery, mostly shot on HDCAM 1080i High Definition, HDV and XDCAM. Write to us for licensing this footage on a broadcast format, for use in your production! We are happy to be commissioned to film for you or else provide you with broadcast crewing and production solutions across South Asia. We pride ourselves in bringing the best of India and South Asia to the world... Reach us at rupindang [at] gmail [dot] com and
[email protected].