Panchayatana puja, worship of the five shrines, sets images or symbols of five deities, Vishnu, Shiva, Devi, Surya and Ganesha, together on a single altar and worships them as equally valid manifestations of one Brahman rather than as rival gods competing for a household's loyalty. Tradition credits the reform to Adi Shankara, the eighth or ninth century philosopher whose Advaita Vedanta commentaries gave classical Hinduism its dominant non-dual framework, and who is remembered as having organized rival regional and sectarian cults, each convinced its own deity was uniquely supreme, into one coherent system in which every form is Brahman appearing differently to different worshippers. Whether or not Shankara personally invented the specific arrangement, the practice is inseparable from his philosophical legacy and from the Smarta community that has carried both forward together.
A sixth deity, most often Ganesha as remover of obstacles or, in some regional variants, Skanda or another figure, is sometimes added, making the group six rather than five, but the five-deity form remains the classical and most widely followed pattern. The five are not arranged hierarchically on the altar; each occupies its own position, commonly with one deity's image placed centrally according to the particular family's or officiant's chosen ishta-devata for that specific rite, while the other four remain present as equally real, equally worshipped forms of the same underlying Brahman.