Rath Yatra

Rath Yatra falls on the second day of the bright fortnight of Ashadha, which puts it in late June or early July. Jagannath, Balabhadra and Subhadra leave the Puri temple for the Gundicha temple and return eight days later, a journey back that Odia families call Bahuda Yatra and Bengali ones call Ulta Rath. You will see the festival written Ratha Jatra in Odia and Rathayatra as one word, and they are the same days. It is kept well beyond Odisha now, and ISKCON has carried it to cities that will never see Puri, so the gift is as likely to be bought in Ahmedabad or London as in Cuttack.

What changes hands is almost always something for the shelf at home rather than something for the day itself: a single Jagannath murti, the three figures kept together, or a pocket temple that folds shut. The reason is practical. The festival is one day and the piece stays for years, so the gift worth giving is the one that earns a place in the mandir afterwards.

We do not make the chariot

The rath itself is the thing asked for most often here and the one thing we do not cast. There is no model chariot, no wooden rath for a Laddu Gopal to sit in, and no silver aswa rath. Those come from makers who specialise in them, and if a chariot is what you came for it is quicker to go straight to one than to work through a grid of figures. What we make is what would sit inside a rath, which for most households is the whole point of owning one.

Why there is as much Krishna here as Jagannath

Jagannath is a form of Krishna, and that is not a technicality. It is the reason the festival travelled at all, since ISKCON keeps Rath Yatra as a Krishna festival, and a great many households mark the day with the Krishna they already have rather than buying a Puri set. A Krishna piece is a legitimate gift for the occasion and not a substitute for one. Households with young children often keep a Laddu Gopal and pull him in a small chariot on the day, a gentler version of the same rite, and it is why a Laddu Gopal is bought here in Ashadha at all.

The Puri question, which comes up all year

Most people looking for a Jagannath gift are not shopping for the festival. Someone in the family has come back from Puri, and they want the shelf at home to carry something of it. That is a year round errand and it wants a different answer: something small, plated, and finished well enough to sit in a living room. The single murti and the pocket temple do that job. For the deity itself, and for why the form looks the way it does, the Jagannath range goes into it properly.

What these are made of

Most of what is here is plated: a resin core, a layer of copper over it, then gold or silver electroplated on top, and on some pieces both. The copper is the layer 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 stays crisp at a small size, and why water is the one thing that ruins them. The brass figures are a different proposition: solid brass, poured slowly into a mould made 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 where a reusable sand mould softens it, and why the alloy has to be high grade, since a lesser brass will not fill the shape cleanly.

The consequence for a gift is simple. If the person receiving it will bathe the murti, give brass. If it is going on a shelf and will be wiped with a dry cloth, a plated piece is the better looking object and costs less at the same size.

What it costs

There is nothing here under a thousand, and it is fairer to say so than to let you find out. The small plated pieces, the single Jagannath murti and the pocket temples sit under two thousand, which is where most Rath Yatra giving actually happens. Under three thousand adds the car dashboard figures and the smaller antique finishes. Under five thousand reaches the brass Krishna figures and the larger plated Radha Krishna. Above that and up to about ten thousand are the standing brass pieces and the Puri three kept as a set, which are bought to be the one thing on a shelf rather than one of several.

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. That matters on this page, because a Rath Yatra gift is usually handed over in a house full of people and opened in front of them. For temples, sanghas and anyone giving these in quantity, there is a bulk order enquiry page.