Makrana White Marble Yashoda with Infant Krishna, 18 in

The mother and son murti

Yashoda holding the infant Krishna is the form most families are picturing when they set up a Janmashtami jhula — the foster mother of Gokul with the child on her lap, rather than the child on his own. She sits on a carved chowki in a full sari, the pallu drawn over both shoulders and the head, both arms around Krishna to hold him upright against her. He wears a small dhoti, anklets, a waist chain and a mukut, and a ball of makhan rests in his hand — the butter he is forever accused of stealing, here simply handed to him. There is no flute. The flute belongs to the Vrindavan Krishna of later years; this murti is fixed at the Gokul infancy, where what is on show is vatsalya bhava, the love between a parent and a child.

The stone

Makrana white marble is quarried at Makrana in Nagaur district, Rajasthan, about two hours from Jaipur — the same stone the Taj Mahal was faced with in the seventeenth century, and still the first choice of Indian temple carvers when a murti has to last generations. It is a dense, fine-grained calcite marble: bright natural white with the faintest warm undertone, lightly crystalline in the grain, carrying occasional grey hairline veins that read as a pencil line rather than a band. Because it is compact rather than porous it takes a soft satin polish that keeps the surface reading as stone, and it holds small detail — the border of a sari, a strand of a pearl necklace, the curl of a chowki leg — without the edges crumbling. In a covered mandir it does not yellow with age.

How this murti is made

This Yashoda and Krishna is made to order rather than taken off a shelf. We work the design through with you — size, stone, finish, how much carving you want on the seat — and then brief it to the master sculptors we work with, artist families who have shaped murtis in Jaipur for generations. They rough the block down to the seated mass first, set the proportions of mother and child, then cut the detail: the fall of the sari, the child's ornaments, the legs of the chowki. Faces, hands and drapery are always finished by hand rather than left to a machine, because that is where a murti either reads as alive or does not. The polish is built up in stages to the satin level. We follow the piece the whole way and deliver it to your door.

Sizing it for your mandir

At 18 inches this Yashoda and Krishna works as the main murti of a home mandir rather than a side piece. With the chowki and the stepped plinth it measures roughly 13 inches across and 7 inches front to back, and weighs close to 22 kilos, so it needs a shelf that genuinely carries weight — a marble slab, a solid wood platform, or the stone base of a built mandir. Leave a hand's width of clear space around it so the drapery and the carved legs of the seat are not crowded by thalis and diyas. If your mandir is compact, the same form holds together down to 12 inches; if you have a full pooja room with a raised singhasan, 24 to 30 inches fills the space better.

Made to your specification

Almost every specification on this Yashoda and Krishna can change. Height runs from 12 inches up to 36 for this form, and the same mother-and-child composition is carved in Makrana white marble, Vietnam white marble, black stone, Dholpur pink sandstone, or cast marble dust where the budget calls for it. The finish can stay at this soft satin polish or go to a full mirror polish or a matte honed surface. The chowki can be plain or carved, the plinth stepped or flat, and the base can carry an engraved name or date, which matters when the murti is going out as a griha pravesh or wedding gift. Send a photo of the mandir it is meant for and we will size it against the shelf first.