Lord Hanuman

Hanuman is one of the few deities people keep outside the mandir as readily as in it, and the four places he ends up want four different pieces. A murti for the home shrine. A figure at the entrance, where it is the first thing seen on the way in and the last on the way out. A compact one on a car dashboard. A small one on an office desk or in a gym.

The shrine piece wants a stable base and roughly five to eight inches of height. The entrance piece has to read from across a room, which usually means larger and plainer rather than more detailed, because fine relief disappears at four feet away. The dashboard piece has to be low, compact and heavy enough at the base to stay put on a bad road, sitting below your sightline and clear of any marked airbag cover; those are grouped in car dashboard idols. The desk piece is usually a face or a meditating form, which reads as sculpture rather than as a shrine and is easier to keep in a shared office.

The forms, and what actually tells them apart

Sinduri Hanuman is the orange-red form, and the colour is the entire point of it. Sindoor, vermilion, is applied to Hanuman murtis in temples across India and builds up over years into a coat thick enough to soften the features underneath. The tradition explains the practice through Hanuman applying sindoor to himself on learning that Sita wore it for Rama's wellbeing. Our sinduri pieces carry that colour in the finish rather than in applied paste, so it stays even and does not transfer to your hands.

Panchmukhi Hanuman is the five-faced form, and the five are not five Hanumans. They are Hanuman facing east, Narasimha to the south, Garuda west, Varaha north and Hayagriva looking upward. The form belongs to the Mahiravana episode: Rama and Lakshmana had been carried off to the netherworld, five lamps set in five directions had to be put out in the same instant, and Hanuman took five faces to reach all five at once. Buyers consistently underestimate it. At the same listed height it is much wider and deeper than a single-faced murti, and it is also the form most often asked for at an entrance.

Abhaya Mudra is the raised open palm, the gesture of reassurance, and it is the one most families choose for a household shrine because it faces the room rather than looking away from it.

The Ram bhakti forms are the quiet ones: hands folded in Anjali Mudra, or the figure seated and turned toward Rama. These read as devotion rather than as strength, they suit a living room better than most Hanuman murtis do, and they are the ones people buy when the piece has to sit somewhere it will be seen by guests.

The meditating face pieces are quieter still. In an antique finish a face idol reads as a sculpture, which is why it turns up on desks and shelves rather than in mandirs, and it is the form to choose if the recipient's practice is unknown to you.

One form people search by describing rather than by name is Hanuman in flight carrying a mountain. Sent for a single healing herb on a Himalayan slope and unable to tell it apart from everything growing beside it, he lifted the whole hill and brought it back. It is a wonderful thing to own and we do not make it, so if that is the piece in your head, this is not the page for it.

Bajrangbali, Anjaneya, Maruti, and the Balaji that is not Balaji

One deity, an unusual number of names. Bajrangbali and Sankat Mochan in the Hindi belt, Anjaneya and Anjaneya Swamy in Telugu, Anjaneyar in Tamil, Maruti in Maharashtra, Hanuman dada in Gujarat. Anjaneya and Anjaneyar come from Anjana, his mother; Maruti from Marut, the wind. They are the same murti, so search by the form you want rather than by the name you grew up with.

The one that genuinely misleads people is Balaji. Salasar Balaji and Mehandipur Balaji in Rajasthan are Hanuman shrines, and the title is used there in a broader sense than in the south. Tirupati Balaji is Venkateswara, a form of Vishnu, and a different deity entirely. If someone has asked you for a Balaji murti, it is worth confirming which one they mean, because the two look nothing alike. Venkateswara pieces are in Tirupati Balaji.

The mace is where the sizing goes wrong

This is the most common mistake made on this page. A Hanuman murti is rarely the shape its listed height suggests, because the gada is usually raised, the shoulders are broad, the tail curves out behind, and in the Panchmukhi form the heads stack outward as well as up. The height tells you almost nothing about whether it will fit.

Measure the width and the depth of the space, not only the clearance above it, and leave room around the mace and the tail. Those are the two points that catch on a shelf edge or a mandir door and chip. Lift the piece by its base, never by the gada, the crown or the tail.

What these are made of, and the one thing that undoes them

The plated pieces, which is most of what is here, are built as a resin core with a layer of copper over it and gold or silver electroplated on top. The copper is the part worth knowing about, because resin does not conduct and cannot be plated directly, so the copper is the layer the precious metal keys onto. That construction is why these pieces are light, why the detail stays crisp at a small size, which matters more on a five-faced murti than on anything else we make, and why water is the one thing that spoils them. The rest of the plated range sits in gold and silver plated idols.

That last point decides the purchase for a certain kind of buyer. Oil and sindoor are offered to Hanuman more than to almost any other deity, and abhishek is common practice. Both stain a plated surface permanently, and no cleaning brings it back. If the murti in your house receives oil, sindoor or water on a regular basis, you want solid brass, which tolerates all three and can be cleaned back indefinitely with lemon and salt or tamarind. We should be straight about this: our brass Hanuman is made in small runs and is out of stock more often than it is in, so for a daily-abhishek piece we are frequently not the right shop. The wider range is in brass idols, and it is worth checking rather than assuming.

Where we do make brass, it is poured slowly into a mould built for that one idol and broken open once the metal has cooled, so every casting gets its own mould. That is why the detail holds around the five faces and the fingers of the raised palm, which is exactly where a reusable sand mould goes soft, and it is why the alloy has to be high grade, since a lesser brass will not fill a shape that fine. Sand cast brass is a cheaper and different process, and on a Panchmukhi murti you can see the difference without being told what to look for.

The white and gold pieces are a resin core coated in marble dust, which gives them the surface and the weight of marble. Their jewellery is made separately in brass, electroplated, and applied to the figure by hand one piece at a time, which is why the finish varies a little between pieces. Keep them dry and lift them by the base. Those are in Premium Edits. An antique finish is a deliberate patina, so it takes a dry cloth and nothing else; cleaning paste strips it rather than restoring it.

On price, a dashboard or shelf size lands under 3,000, a shrine-sized plated figure under 5,000, and the tallest pieces approach 10,000. Every piece is checked at our own warehouse before it goes out.

Direction, Tuesday, and which of these rules are actually rules

Tuesday and Saturday are the days conventionally associated with Hanuman, and that association is old, widespread and uncontroversial. Almost everything else you will read about placing a Hanuman murti is not.

Read four placement guides and you will get four answers. One will tell you he must face south, another south-west, another that east is equally correct. One will say the household shrine is the right place and another that he should not be in the shrine room at all. They are all written in the same certain voice. What they have in common is custom rather than text, and where a practice varies this much by region and family, presenting any one version as the rule is guesswork wearing a straight face.

What we would actually say: the conventions your family keeps are the ones worth keeping, and if there are none, put the murti where it is raised off the floor, stable, and somewhere it will be seen daily rather than somewhere it will be walked past. The convention of not placing Hanuman beside Shani, like the southern orientation, is sincerely held and widely followed, and we would not tell anyone to disregard it. We also will not pretend it is scripture.

His devotion to Rama is the centre of the story, and the two are very often kept together; Rama pieces are in Lord Ram idols.

Given for a new car, a new job, a new house

Hanuman is among the most given murtis in India, and the occasions are specific: a new vehicle, a first job, a move into a new house, an exam or a recovery. Protection is the reason in every case, which is why the question people ask first is whether a Hanuman idol can be given at all. It can, and it routinely is. The only real judgement to make is the form, and a smaller, quieter piece travels better between households than a large five-faced one.

Everything ships in our own packaging, which is made to be opened rather than merely to survive the journey. On this page that matters more than most, because a good share of these are handed over in front of a room and unwrapped on the spot, and a plated piece presents at its best straight out of the box.

Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanti are the seasonal peaks, gathered in Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanti gifts. For a griha pravesh there is housewarming gifts, and for volume, corporate gifts. To furnish the shrine itself, pooja essentials; for the wider pantheon, god idols and figurines.