Damaru: The Cost of Priceless Works

The current price of Damaruworks damaru are $425 for all sizes and styles, except rare specialty items, like the snakeskin damaru, the “jamshing” damaru, etc. These prices are all noted in the gallery under the picture of each damaru.
Shing (wood) kangling are currently $185 for these exquisitly crafted items.

Are DamaruWorks damaru “expensive” compared to others?

First we should put the cost of these works of art in the context of other traditional musical instruments—and specifically ethnic drums. A quick search of the web this morning showed the following:

A regular conga drum is $250
http://drums-percussion.musiciansfriend.com/product/Latin-Percussion-Performer-Series-11-34-Conga?sku=441047

Professional bongo drums are about $220
http://drums-percussion.musiciansfriend.com/product/Latin-Percussion-Raul-Rekow-Tiger-Print-Bongo?sku=447721

When it comes to ethnic drums, the story is even more dramatic:
An African Djembe drum is $630
http://www.lpmusic.com/Product_Showcase/Community_Drums/lp_djembe.html

Native double-sided Native American hoop drums: $240-$800
http://www.livingdrums.com/living_drums.htm

Siberian Shamanic drums $500-$900
http://www.nicholaswood.net/Pages/Drums.htm

One-sided plain shamanic drum $450
http://www.s265285905.online.de/?Order

While it is impossible to compare different traditions, note, that none of the above drums are made with internal hand-painted sacred gold mantras, human bone power beaters, nor with skins buried for weeks according to revealed terma. Nor do they even come with special brocade and wool-lined traditional cases to protect the skins.

If we talked about other, completely non-sacred hand-crafted musical items, such as guitars, the prices are in the thousands.

Why are other damarus cheaper?

The commercial damarus that you can buy at about a dozen stores on the web, cost from $90-170

http://www.snowlionpub.com/html/product_957.html
These are NOT authentic damaru, the differences being well described and visually portrayed on the web pages. More importantly, Kathmandu you can buy such damaru for $25-$40, any day of the week! With their thin cheap skins, painted with toxic green paint and mocked-up or absent mantras, their lack of shell or metal ring, cheap brocade and cracked, knotty or bug eaten wood, they are basically tourist toys, not sacred dharma instruments. And real SengDeng is almost extinct in Nepal and can only be had in Sikkim or Bhutan at this point in time. In Nepal they use young trees (note the “two-toned” wood) rather than 100-200 year old specimens.

Why are DamaruWorks damaru so reasonable?

The answer is simple. The secret is this—Other ethnic or foreign made drums are marked up AT LEAST 300%. In the area of Tibetan art, every statue, thanka or ritual implement you can buy in America or Europe can be had in Nepal at a third of the price or sometimes much less. For example, go to the well-known www.tibetantreasures.com. Their lovely statues are all four times (400%) the price they cost on the streets of Nepal.
Is this wrong? Not at all. The price of importing these, duty, taxes, stocking them, salespeople, advertising makes this a quite reasonable “mark up.” In the retail world, markup can typically be 600-1000% of original cost.

Our Damaru Prices

I offer these far below what I should if I wanted to make a healthy profit or “living” from selling drums. In fact, I am not a salesman or store-owner. My goal is to get these into the hands of practitioners. Seeing people using useless and phony instruments is painful, as it is goes completely against the transformation we are working towards in Vajrayana.

Where did the Money Go?

ALL profits are used for Dharmic purposes. They support the artisans and their families who create these damaru and other sacred objects. Any profit is then used to archive texts, donate to lamas, sponsor rituals, create literature and all kinds of beneficial activity that is so needed in our time.

Thank you for your support.

When you play on a REAL damaru for the first time, you will see the dramatic difference!