Lord Shiva

About

Mahadev murti and Shiva idols for the home Most murtis in an Indian house are kept. This one gets handled. Shiva is the deity people actually pour things over, week after week, and that single habit decides more about which piece you should buy than any question of form or posture. Shiv, Shiva, Mahadev, Shankar and Neelkanth are one deity under different names, and a Mahadev murti, a Mahadev ki murti, a Shiv murti or Shivji murti, and a Shiva statue are all the same object described by different households. Mahadev is the name most people reach for in everyday Hindi. Neelkanth names the blue throat he took on after drinking the halahala poison at the churning of the ocean. The metal gets the same treatment: what a listing calls brass is pital in most of North India, and it is the same thing. Product titles use whichever name suits the form, so judge by the photograph, the posture and the dimensions rather than the wording. If you perform abhishek, buy brass Shiva is the deity most associated with daily abhishek. Jalabhishek with water, milk, honey, curd and bilva leaves is ordinary household practice, and on Mahashivratri it is the whole observance. That one fact should decide your material. Plated and marble dust pieces cannot take it, and the reason is what they are made of. A plated piece is a resin core with a layer of copper over it and the gold or silver on top; a marble dust piece is a resin core with a marble dust coating and hand-set plated jewellery. In both cases the precious metal is a surface over a body that is not metal, so milk, water and kumkum lift it within months. No amount of care afterwards brings it back. If your Shiva will be bathed, buy solid brass , which is metal the whole way through, tolerates all of it, and cleans back indefinitely with lemon and salt. Brass here is poured into a mould made for that one idol and broken open once cooled, which is where the detail comes from. If the murti is for display, for a shelf you keep rather than o