While lurking online and reading some Yahoo! news article, I came across a photo:
Indian men and women sometimes wear a mark on the forehead, a dot, smudge, or lines of red, black, or ash-grey. The woman’s mark is most often called a bindi,
which is a piece of decorative jewelry worn just above or between the eyes.
Tilaka (or tilak), on the other hand:
is a mark worn on the forehead and other parts of the body, not to be confused with a bindi.
Now kumkum is the powdery stuff used as markings on the body and are made from turmeric or saffron.
What does the red dot mean?
It means a target to the head as with laser pointers. It has nothing to do with the third eye chakra.
I wonder if time travelers (carrying military arms) visited the antiquities, thus giving rise to Hinduism as a religion.
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