Makrana White Marble Neem Karoli Baba on Takhat 48in

The stone

Makrana white marble comes out of the Nagaur belt in Rajasthan, the quarry that faced the Taj Mahal and has supplied Indian temple sculpture for six centuries. It is a dense, low-porosity calcite marble with a fine crystalline grain, which is exactly what a piece like this one needs: the chequered blanket is not painted here, it is cut, so the stone has to hold a shallow, crisp relief across a large curved surface without crumbling at the edges. Makrana takes that relief and keeps it. The colour reads a bright natural white with the faintest warm undertone and the occasional hairline grey vein, and the piece is finished in a soft satin polish rather than a mirror gloss. A mirror surface throws hard highlights that flatten carved drapery; satin lets every fold keep its own shadow.

The form: Maharajji on his takhat

Neem Karoli Baba is seated cross-legged in sukhasana on a low takhat, the wooden bench his devotees describe him sitting and lying on at Kainchi Dham, carved here from the same block as the figure so there is no join between saint and seat. One hand rests on the raised knee, the other lies open in the lap, and both feet are drawn up bare on the bench. He is bald and bare-headed, with no turban and no head cloth, a short trimmed grey-white beard and a stout, heavy-set body wrapped in the chequered plaid blanket over a white dhoti. He is Blanket Baba, and the blanket is the identity: heavy folded drapery with a fringed edge, its check worked in shallow low relief so the weave reads in the marble itself. Nothing about the figure is stylised.

Carving the blanket in Jaipur

A 48-inch Neem Karoli Baba with an integral takhat begins with block selection, because a single sound block is needed for both figure and bench and a hairline flaw in the takhat apron would show under raking light. The mass is roughed out with pneumatic points, the primary planes of the body and the bench are established next, and only then does the detail begin. Face, hands and drapery are hand-finished throughout; nothing on this piece is machine-polished. The blanket check is the slowest stage, cut with fine points and rifflers so the lines stay even across the fall of the folds, and the turned legs and scroll frieze of the takhat are carved from the same stone rather than added on. The piece is made to order and takes roughly eight to twelve weeks at this size, from approved drawing to crated dispatch.

Sizing it for an ashram hall

At 48 inches this Neem Karoli Baba murti sits at about the height of a seated adult, which is the scale at which a seated form still reads properly from ten or fifteen feet away across a hall; a smaller piece simply disappears in that volume. Allow around four feet of clear width and a solid floor or a low masonry platform, since with the bench the murti weighs close to 45 kilos and is best set once and left in place. Ashrams dress it simply, a garland at the neck and a folded cloth on the takhat beside him. If the hall is smaller the same form works at 30 or 36 inches, and it can be cut in Vietnam white marble or hand-painted with the blanket in its familiar tartan check. Send your hall dimensions on WhatsApp and the drawing is sized to them.