Maa Rajarajeshwari

About

Who she is, and whether she is yours to keep 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 al