Mahashivratri Collection

About

Shivratri, Shivaratri, Maha Shivaratri, Shiv Ratri: one night, spelled several ways, and it moves. It falls on the fourteenth night of the dark fortnight of Phalguna, which puts it in February or March depending on the year. What makes it unlike the rest of the calendar is that it is kept at night rather than by day, traditionally through four prahar with an abhishek in each, and bilva leaves are the offering that belongs to it. So the buying question is not really which deity. It is Shiva either way. The question is what the piece is going to be asked to do. A murti you will bathe and a murti you are giving want opposite things This is the one thing worth getting right, and almost nothing written about the day says it. If you are performing the abhishekams yourself, the piece takes water, milk and honey four times in a single night, and then again every year after. Only solid brass tolerates that. Ours is poured slowly into a mould made for that one idol, and the mould is 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 one will not fill the shape cleanly. It is solid metal throughout, so it darkens as a surface oxide rather than as damage and comes back with lemon and salt. The brass range is considerably wider than the Shiva pieces you will find here. If you are giving the murti to somebody, the calculation reverses. Most people set a gifted piece on a mandir shelf and do aarti to it. They do not bathe it. For that a plated or a Premium Edit piece is the better gift, because it presents at its best from the moment it is unwrapped and asks nothing of the person receiving it. A plated piece is a resin core with a layer of copper over it and gold or silver electroplated on top, and on some pieces both. The copper is the layer that matters, since resin cannot be plated directly and the copper is what the precious m