Viṣṇu in his three abodes : some observations about three-storey and triple-shrined Viṣṇu temples in South India

The article refers to the cult of material forms of gods, being one of the characteristic features of the Pāñcarātra, an early Vaiṣṇava Tantric tradition of India as well as to the specific type of temples in which Viṣṇu is worshipped. While usually, the devakoṣṭhas of the Vaiṣṇava temples are empty, they are provided with many additional shrines of different forms of Viṣṇu and his companions, but sometimes they also have more than one Viṣṇu’s mūrtis in the main shrine which reside in the three-storey shrine - tritāla vimāna. In the article, I refer to some of them.