Lord Jagannath

Almost everyone who comes to a Jagannath murti for the first time asks the same thing: why the great round eyes, why the arms that stop short, why no hands or feet. The tradition answers with a story. Vishwakarma agreed to carve the deities only on the condition that he be left undisturbed behind closed doors, and the doors were opened before he had finished. What stood there was accepted exactly as it was, because the incompleteness was read as the will of the deity rather than an accident of the carving. Every Jagannath since has kept it, from the deities in the Puri sanctum to a murti small enough for a desk. It is the one thing worth knowing before you buy, because a first-time buyer occasionally mistakes it for a badly made idol.

Three figures, and a fourth most people miss

Jagannath is rarely kept alone. He stands with Balabhadra, his elder brother, also called Balaram, and with Subhadra, their sister. At Puri a fourth stands beside them: Sudarshana, a plain pillar rather than a figure. The four together are what the temple calls the chaturdha murti, and a set sold as a trio gives you the three siblings. In any painted image the three are told apart by colour, Balabhadra white, Subhadra yellow and Jagannath dark. A gold or silver plated set is the colour of its plating instead, so there you identify them by their placement and the shape of the crowns.

The Puri deities are neem wood. These are not.

This is the gap between what people picture and what is actually for sale, so it is worth being plain about. The deities at Puri are carved from daru, a neem wood chosen by a search party against a list of marks the tree has to carry, and because wood ages they are replaced at Nabakalebara, the new body, in a year that carries a second month of Ashadha. That falls somewhere between twelve and nineteen years apart. During it the Brahma Padartha is moved from the old body to the new one at night, by priests who are blindfolded and whose hands are wrapped, and nobody who has carried it has ever described it. That is the honest answer to what people search for as what is inside the Jagannath idol: no one outside the ritual knows.

Svastika does not make a carved wood piece, and if a daru murti in the Puri style is what you want, buy it from a wood carver and not here. What we make is plated: a resin core, a layer of copper over it, then gold or silver electroplated on top. The copper is the part that matters, because resin cannot be plated directly and the copper is what the precious metal keys onto. It is also why these pieces are light, why the detail holds at under three inches where the eyes and the crown are most of the face, and why water is the one thing they will not survive.

No abhishek on a plated Jagannath

It follows from the construction. Under the gold or silver there is copper, and under the copper a resin core, and neither is meant to be wet. Abhishek on a plated murti is the one genuine mistake a buyer can make here, and the finish does not come back. A plated Jagannath is for darshan, for flowers, for a diya kept at a distance, and for a dry cloth. If the murti will be bathed daily, this is not the right shelf. There is no brass Jagannath here at the moment either, since the brass range covers other deities, so anyone searching for a pital Jagannath is looking for something we do not currently make.

Size, and where it will actually sit

The range starts under three inches and tops out around eight, which is home mandir and desk territory rather than temple scale. Most of the demand sits at the small end and that is a sound instinct, because this face is mostly eyes and it survives being made small in a way a many-armed figure does not. A single figure under three inches suits a crowded mandir shelf, a study table or a desk at work. The taller silver piece is the one to choose if it has to carry across a room.

If you are buying the trio, measure width rather than height. Three figures side by side take far more shelf than one murti of the same listed height, and the clearance at the ends is the measurement people get wrong. There is also a temple that folds shut around the figures, which is what to send when you do not know the size of the recipient's mandir, and what to take when the murti travels. See pocket temples.

What it costs

Two bands, with little in between. A single plated Jagannath or the folding temple sits under 2,000, which is where most people buy. The three-figure set and the largest silver figure sit above 5,000. If you are giving to a household that already keeps a Jagannath, the single figure is usually the better gift. If a mandir is being furnished from nothing, the trio is the form the tradition actually asks for.

The names it goes by

Odia writes Jagannatha. Bengali households say Jagannath Dev or Jogonnath, and often Thakur. North India says Jagannath Ji or Jagannath Baba. Mahaprabhu and Jagannath Swami turn up everywhere, and murti, moorti, idol and statue all mean the same object. Jagannath is a form of Krishna, which is why a household that keeps one often wants the other: see Krishna idols.

Rath Yatra, and giving one away

The chariot festival at Puri is the season this collection belongs to. The three ride out on three separate chariots, one each, pulled by the crowd, and the English word juggernaut comes from exactly that sight, brought back by travellers who had no word of their own for it. Rath Yatra is kept well beyond Odisha, in Bengali and Vaishnava households and by anyone with a Puri connection, and a Jagannath at home is how that is held on to in a city far from the coast. See Rath Yatra.

As a gift it is a certainty for an Odia family and a considered choice for anyone who has made the trip. Every piece is checked at our own warehouse before it goes out, and everything ships in our own packaging, made to be opened rather than merely to survive the journey, which matters here because a Jagannath is often handed over on the festival day with people in the room. For a new home, see griha pravesh and housewarming gifts. For quantity, corporate gifts or the bulk order enquiry. The wider pantheon is in god idols, and the finishes are shared with the rest of the gold and silver plated range.