Lord Kubera

Kubera is one of the few deities a great many households keep without ever having visited a temple of his. There are very few. He tends to arrive in someone else's company, on Dhanteras, in a pair with Lakshmi, and he is often put not in the mandir at all but on the shelf where the cash box sits.

That is the whole logic of him. Lakshmi is prosperity itself and Kubera is its custody: he is the treasurer of the gods and the king of the yakshas, who in the older texts guard the wealth lying in the earth and in the roots of trees. He keeps rather than gives. Which is why the tradition sets him beside her rather than in place of her, and why the pair is the more usual thing to buy.

Kuber and Kubera are the same name and both spellings are in ordinary use. He is Vaishravana after his father Vishrava, which is the name Buddhism generally uses, and Dhanapati, lord of wealth. Kuberan in Tamil and Malayalam. In Tamil the north corner of a building is itself called the kubera moolai, after him.

Where to keep a Kuber idol at home or in a shop

This is what almost everyone arrives asking, so it is worth separating the part that is old and textual from the part that is custom.

The textual part is simple. Kubera is a dikpala, one of the guardians of the directions, and the direction he guards is the north. That association is genuinely ancient and it is not something the internet invented.

Everything after it is convention, sincerely kept and very widely observed. The murti goes on the north side of the room or against the north wall. In a shop or an office it goes at the counter, at the till, or on the shelf beside the safe, and where there is a locker the custom is for its door to open toward the north. He is set facing into the room or into the house rather than out through a door. Nothing in any of this confines him to a business, either: the home shelf is as usual as the shop counter. These are the things people do, and we can tell you what the convention is without telling you what it will do.

You will also see the northeast named, which looks like a contradiction and mostly is not. The northeast is where the household shrine is conventionally placed in general, so the two pieces of advice are answering different questions, one about Kubera and one about the mandir. If he is going into a mandir you already keep, he goes where the mandir is.

There is a fair question underneath all of it, which is whether you need a murti at all. The custom already has an answer for a house that does not own one: the cash box or the safe is worshipped in his place, with a swastika drawn on it, and the coins offered as dakshina are kept in the locker afterwards. If that is already what your family does on Dhanteras, it is complete as it stands. Buy the figure because you want the figure.

Kubera or a laughing Buddha

People arrive comparing the two because the market has merged them. There are listings sold as Dhan Kubera laughing Buddha, as though one object answered to both names, and it does not.

The laughing Buddha is Budai, a Chinese monk of around the tenth century, later identified with Maitreya and long since absorbed into feng shui. Kubera is a yaksha king out of the Sanskrit texts and a guardian of the north. Both are shown stout, both are associated with plenty, and that resemblance is the entire reason the two were run together in the first place. They are not the same figure, they do not come from the same tradition, and no puja treats them as interchangeable.

So if what you want is the Hindu figure, the Dhanteras puja and the pairing with Lakshmi, that is Kubera, and Kubera is what we make. If you simply like the other object, buy it as itself. The thing worth avoiding is buying one in the belief that it is the other.

What to look for in a brass Kuber murti

Look at the mongoose before anything else. The nakula in his left hand, shown disgorging jewels, is the attribute that identifies him, and it is also the first thing a cheap casting gives up. Soften that detail and you cannot tell what he is holding, and a Kubera nobody can identify is only a seated man with a pot. The jewels and the ornament are fine relief on a figure four inches tall, which is exactly the scale at which casting quality shows.

Which is the argument for the way ours are made. Solid brass, poured slowly into a mould made for that one idol and broken open once the metal has cooled. Every casting gets its own mould, which is why the detail holds where a reusable sand mould softens it, and it is why the brass itself has to be high grade, since a lesser alloy will not fill the shape cleanly. Sand cast brass is a different and cheaper process, and at this size the difference is visible rather than theoretical.

On size, the pieces here are four inches, which suits a shelf mandir, a counter or a locker shelf. The Lakshmi Kubera pair is a good deal wider than a single figure, so measure the full base rather than the height. Nothing here is built for a car dashboard; the pieces sized for that are other deities, in the dashboard range.

On money, solid brass at this level of detail puts a single figure in the under 5,000 band and a Lakshmi Kubera pair in the under 10,000 band. There is nothing inexpensive here and it would be misleading to suggest otherwise, because that is simply what the material and the casting cost. If you want something small and under a thousand to sit inside a locker, a plated piece is the sensible answer rather than anything on this shelf.

Brass is solid metal throughout, so abhishek is fine on it in a way it is not on a plated piece, where the core underneath is resin. It darkens between cleanings, which is surface oxide rather than damage, and lemon and salt brings it back in about ten minutes. Every piece is checked at our own warehouse before it goes out.

Dhanteras, Diwali and the Lakshmi Kubera puja

This is the season, and effectively the only one. Dhanteras, or Dhanatrayodashi, falls on the thirteenth day and opens the Diwali week, and the Lakshmi Kubera puja is done on that evening or on Diwali evening. It is the one occasion in the year when Kubera is worshipped in most houses in his own right rather than as an accompanying presence.

The custom of buying metal on the day is what makes a solid brass figure the traditionally apt object here rather than a plated one. Brass sits inside that custom. A resin core with metal over it, whatever it looks like, does not.

Order when you decide rather than in the week itself. Stock is thin going into this season, thinner than it usually runs, and a specific piece is more likely to go before the Dhanteras week than during it. See Dhanteras gifts and Diwali gifts for the rest of what the week takes.

Kubera as a gift for a shop, an office or a new business

A Lakshmi Kubera pair is the natural gift for a shop opening, a new office or a first business, and it is a common Dhanteras gift between families and to staff. It is the better gift than the single figure for the same reason it is the better buy: it is the whole idea rather than half of it. See Maa Lakshmi on her own, or Lakshmi with Ganesha, which is the other pairing a business is likely to already keep.

Everything ships in our own packaging, which is made to be opened rather than merely to survive the journey. That counts for more here than on most pages, because a good share of these are handed over at an opening, in front of people, and unwrapped on the spot.

One thing we do not make is a Kuber yantra. It is asked for often, particularly the small ones people keep in a wallet or fix to a north wall, and there is nothing of the sort in the store.

For a griha pravesh or a house rather than a business, see housewarming gifts; for volume, corporate gifts or the bulk order enquiry. To furnish the shelf he is going on, pooja essentials. For the rest of the pantheon in the same solid brass, see god idols and figurines.