Tattooing and branding is a tradition that can be dated all the back to 1017 AD and still practiced today by devotees of the Krishna faith as an essential part of the initiation process, especially in the southern states of India that include Karnataka, Tamil, Nadu, Kerala, and Andra Pradesh.

Imagine if you will, that it is morning and the air is cool as the sun begins to rise behind you. As the birds begin to sing their morning mantras, your heart beats achingly in your chest as you sit staring quietly at the sacrificial pits that are blazing in front of you as the married priest begins to perform the fire ceremony. The priest offers oblations as he invokes the ayudha devatas, which are the personified forms of the sacred weapons of Lord Vishnu.

The priest takes the metal stamps of the traditional symbols in the shape of each weapon, which are attached to the metal poles and are held inside the dancing flames. The priest then takes them and taps them on a plate. As you watch, you know the priest is doing this to make certain that all the loose pieces of hot charcoal fall off so that they do not come off on your skin.

Finally, the priest begins his chant of the mantra for Sudarshana, which is Lord Vishnu's discuss. The time has come and you begin to tense as you feel the burning brand press against your right shoulder burning and stinging your skin. The Pancajanya mantra is chanted while the symbol of the conch shell is branded onto your left shoulder. You are now ready for the rest of your initiation ceremony as the other symbols are prepared in tilaka clay to draw them on your body.

In traditions and scriptures, branding definitely gets its fair amount of exposure. However, the tilaka clay presents the closest parallel to branding or tattooing. Today, the u-shaped mark and the oval worn on the forehead in the tilaka clay is one of the most instantly recognizable symbols. As in the Vaishnava scriptures, the instructions to write the holy names with tilaka clay and even to draw the pictures on the body are contained within them.

The complete science of bhakti yoga, known as the Bhakti rasamrita sindhu, contains the verse, "In marking such tilaka, sometimes one may write Hare Krishna on the body." Also, within this science it states, "Persons whose bodies are marked with tilaka, symbolizing the conch shell, wheel, club, and lotus... even seen once, can help the seer be relieved from all sinful activities."

Then in Hari bhakti vilasa, Lord Vishnu states, "I enter within the hearts of those devotees who, in the age of Kali, decorate their bodies with drawings of My incarnations, such as Matsya and Kurma... Those who wear the drawings of My incarnations on their bodies are not ordinary human beings-they exist on the same platform as My incarnations."

In discussing this subject in great detail, this point is continued to be enforce in over fifty verses stating in the effect that if a fallen devotee does not decorate his body with the drawing of the symbols, then the devotee should be placed upon the back of a donkey and driving out of the society or kingdom as it was once called.