Handcrafted Hand-Painted Marble Dust Khatu Shyam Ji Shish Darshan Murti, 6in

The shish darshan form of Khatu Shyam Ji

Khatu Shyam Ji is Barbarika, the grandson of Bhima, who gave away his head on the eve of the Mahabharata and asked only to watch the war to its end. Krishna blessed that head to be worshipped through the Kali Yuga under his own name — Shyam — and the temple at Khatu, in Sikar district of Rajasthan, grew up around it. This is why the head alone is a whole murti rather than a fragment of one: the shish darshan is the deity. The face is always a youth's, beardless and calm under a crowned mukut with a peacock plume, and devotees know him as Haare ka Sahara, the refuge of those who have lost.

Cast marble dust, hand-painted in polychrome

Marble dust composite is crushed marble bound in resin and cast rather than quarried, which is what keeps a small piece like this consistent and affordable. The texture comes out very fine and even, and it takes paint far better than an open-grained stone. The colour is laid on by hand once the cast has cured: warm skin tones, black hair, a vermilion tilak, green and blue in the peacock plume, and gold on the mukut, the earrings, the necklace band and the jewelled bosses. The marigold-and-leaf garland is carved into the arch of the stele first and painted afterwards in orange, yellow and green so each bloom reads on its own. The rectangular base is left unpainted, so the natural stone shows plainly at the foot.

A six-inch murti for the home mandir

At six inches this sits on a mandir shelf, a puja chowki or a desk without needing a niche of its own. The stele is roughly four and a half inches across and under two inches deep, so it stands close against a wall — useful in an apartment mandir where depth runs out before height does. Keep it raised on a chowki or a shelf rather than resting it on the floor. It also travels well: this is the size that packs for a Falgun Mela trip to Khatu, or posts to family abroad. Dust the painted surface with a dry, soft cloth; water and cleaning liquids will dull hand-applied colour and gold over time.

Commissioning your Khatu Shyam murti

The same shish darshan can be made larger, or cut in Makrana white marble or black stone if you would rather have the form in plain natural stone than in colour, and the painting can follow the shringar in your own darshan photographs from Khatu. There may already be a finished piece with the sculptors and painters we work with — we will ask, and send you photographs of the actual murti. A fresh commission runs eight to twelve weeks. Tell us the date you are working towards and we will tell you which of the two you are looking at.