I received the photo below today the panipitha via email, and was surprised how the garden around it has grown by now , since at the time of installing it was all still a mud bath and only this spring the first plants were planted. Very good manure they used, one might think.
To the right of the panipitha you can see a stainless steel pipe coming out of the ground. It is intended that water will flow out of it, by means of a bent tube, over the black lingam. The water will later flow back to the canal through a gutter.
It's very nice to see how a sculpture gradually takes over its space, and how an atmosphere is created in the garden where it is part of. That's why I wanted to dedicate a short message to it.
After all parts of the Shivalingam at the time and polished, and I had tested them in a test setup, to see if it fit, the five components were ready to be transported for their installation. It all together weighs about one metric tonne; it's 125 cm wide by 125 cm high and 175 cms long. I made the whole Shivalingam and its base from different kinds of granite.
when he: black granite for the lingam, Balmoral red granite for the base, and the yoni or panipitha from a kind of pinkish/brownish granite of which I do not know the name. It is certainly all pretty hard stuff.
Hoisting
The parts needed to be hoisted over a shed and a tree and then put inside the courtyard. There I bolted them together with thick threaded rods, after which we could bond the lingam in its recess.
Two videos of a lingam and panipitha. It may have become the largest Shivalingam in North Holland, perhaps in the Netherlands; I wouldn't know how to check that. It stands at the Sri Sai Mandiram in Onderdijk.
