Maa Rajarajeshwari

Rajarajeshwari means the queen of queens. She is the supreme goddess of the Sri Vidya tradition, worshipped as sovereign of the universe in her benevolent aspect rather than one of the fierce ones, and she is identified with Lalita Tripurasundari. In Sri Vidya she is the presiding deity of the Sri Chakra, which is why the households that keep her generally keep her alongside a practice rather than as an ornament.

That is the honest test of whether this is the right murti for you. She belongs to a specific tradition and is worshipped in a specific way, largely in Shakta and South Indian households. Outside it, a Durga or a Lakshmi is the more natural choice and nobody will think less of the decision.

What she holds, and what to look at on the casting

She is shown seated and crowned, four-armed, with the noose and the goad in her upper hands and the sugarcane bow and flower arrows in her lower ones. The tradition reads the noose as attachment and the goad as aversion, held rather than wielded, and the bow of sugarcane with its five flower arrows as the mind and the five senses. Together they mark her as the compassionate sovereign rather than one of the fierce forms. A parrot is also hers, and the piece here shows her with the sugarcane and the parrot.

What to look at in the photograph is the crown and the attributes, because they are the thin parts and they are the first thing a poor casting loses. The face and the seated body will read correctly on almost anything. The goad, the arrows and the points of the crown will not.

Brass, and one size

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 alloy has to be high grade, since a lesser brass will not fill the shape cleanly. On a figure like this, where the crown, four arms and four attributes are all fine work, that is the whole difference between a murti you can read and one that has gone vague. Sand cast brass is a different and cheaper process, and it shows exactly there.

The casting is hollow inside, which the listing states plainly, so it weighs less than the size suggests. It is metal all the same: safe for abhishek, cleanable indefinitely with lemon and salt or tamarind, and it will darken between cleanings as surface oxide rather than damage. Four inches is the size we make, which suits a home mandir shelf or a desk. Plan the space by the width rather than the height, because the crown and the outstretched attributes make the silhouette broader than a plain seated figure.

The names she goes by

Written Rajarajeshwari, Rajrajeshwari or Raja Rajeshwari, and prefixed Sri or Maa. Lalita, Lalitha, Tripura Sundari and Tripurasundari all name the same goddess, and among the ten Mahavidyas she appears as Shodashi. In Tamil usage a murti of her is often called simply an Amman statue. Kamakshi at Kanchipuram and Meenakshi at Madurai are understood in the same tradition as forms of her, though each is worshipped as her own deity in her own temple.

What we do not make

No panchaloha casting, which is the five metal alloy a South Indian household may specifically want and is worth buying from a maker who does it properly. No silver. Nothing above four inches, so a larger mandir or a temple installation needs a different scale of supplier. There is no Sri Yantra here either, and that matters more on this page than it would on most, since a household in Sri Vidya will usually want the yantra and the murti together.

Placement, and as a gift

The northeast is the quadrant associated with the household shrine in the vastu tradition, which has a genuine textual lineage behind it. Past that, the particular observances around her belong to the practice of the family keeping her rather than to any general convention, and a household in Sri Vidya will already have been taught them.

As a gift she is narrow and precise, which is a strength when you know the family. She is right for a Shakta or Sri Vidya household, at Navratri, at a Devi occasion, or for a griha pravesh in such a family. Given outside it she is a beautiful object carrying a meaning the recipient does not hold, and something from the wider pantheon does more work. Every piece is checked at our own warehouse before it goes out, and everything ships in our own packaging, which is made to be opened rather than merely to survive the journey.

For the other Devi forms, see Maa Durga, Maa Lakshmi and Maa Saraswati. See also Navratri gifts and griha pravesh and housewarming gifts; for volume, corporate gifts or the bulk order enquiry page. To furnish the mandir, pooja essentials; for the material, brass idols; and for the wider pantheon, god idols and figurines.