The Development of Hindu Iconography c16.67

Language: English

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Śrī-Lakṣmī and Puṣṭi-Sarasvatī are the two goddesses who came to be respected by the Indians of all religious creeds. They are still held in high esteem by a large section of the people of India and special homage is paid to them on different tithis (lunar days) and parvans (days of religious ceremonies). The former is worshipped more often in the year than the latter whose clay image is worshipped in Bengal with great pomp and ceremony in the Śrī-Pañcamī day falling usually in the bright fortnight of January-February, every year. The principal idea underlying the conception of the goddess Śrī-Lakṣmī is that of good fortune or luck which brings in blissful prosperity and abundance. The idea of radiant beauty came to be associated with her from the very beginning, and though she never had a cult of her own in the sense in which Viṣṇu, Śiva and others had, she came to be regarded in the epic and Purāṇic period as the Śakti of Vāsudeva Viṣṇu. A careful analysis of the literary and archaeological data connected with her origin and evolution leaves little doubt about the fact that folk elements played a great part in shaping her ideology and form, the concrete concept about her being only traceable from the late Vedic period onwards. In the earliest literature of the Indians, the Ṛk and other Saṃhitās, there is no mention of the goddess as such. Words like śrī, no doubt occur there, but they are used in a general way;

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for example, the passage śriyase kam bhānubhiḥ sam mimiskire (R.V., I. 87, 6) means ‘(the Maruts) wish to sprinkle rainwater with shining rays of the sun’. It must be observed, however, that in the early Saṃhitā texts, we find the names of other goddesses, more or less of an abstract character, which are reminiscent of the goddess Śrī-Lakṣmī of later texts. The name Purandhi (regarded by many as the Vedic form of Avestan Parendi) occurs about nine times in the Ṛgveda in the sense of the goddess of plenty; Rākā (probably from the root rā to give) is mentioned there only twice as a rich and beautiful goddess. Sinivālī, another very interesting goddess (she is called Viṣṇu's wife in the Atharvaveda, VIII. 46, 3) is also mentioned twice in the Ṛgveda. In Atharvaveda, II. 32, 6 and 7, she is described as the sister of the gods, fair-armed, fair-fingered, prolific and mistress of the family (viśpatnī), and is invoked for granting offspring; in X. 184, she and Sarasvatī are asked to bear progeny. In the later Vedic texts, however, Rākā and Sinivālī are connected with different phases of the moon, the former being the presiding deity of the full moon night (pūrṇimā), and the latter, the same of the new moon night (amāvasyā). After a careful comparison of Śrī-Lakṣmī with these Vedic goddesses, it cannot be clearly established that any one of the latter could have served as the sole prototype of the former.

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In one of the Brāhmaṇa texts we find mention of the concrete concept of the goddess, and a curious story is narrated there about her origin. The Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa says that Prajāpati got tired in creating beings, and Śrī came forth from him while he was in this condition (this account reminds one of the birth of Pallas-Athene out of the aching head of Zeus as described in Greek mythological literature). Her beauty and resplendence made the gods envy her, and they wanted to kill her; but Prajāpati dissuaded them from this as she was a female, and asked them to take away all her attributes from her, sparing her life. ‘Then Agni, Soma, Varuṇa, Mitra, Indra, Bṛhaspati, Savitṛ, Puṣan, Sarasvatī and Tvaṣṭṛ took from her food, kingdom, universal sovereignty, noble rank, power, holy lustre, dominion, wealth, prosperity and beautiful forms respectively. Then on Prajāpati's advice, she after offering ten sacrificial dishes to the ten divinities had every thing restored to her’ (XI. 4, 1 ff.). The inner significance of this story is not difficult to understand, and the goddess embodies all the major good things coveted by man. The Taittirīya Upaniṣad (I. 4) also emphasises this character of the goddess, and many more such texts can be cited, which do the same thing. The Śrī-sūkta, evidently a late supplement (khila) of the Ṛgveda, characterises in its fifteen verses most of the distinctive features which she came to possess in her developed form;

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it is in the first of these verses that we find her being named Lakṣmī and described as ‘a golden coloured antelope decorated with garlands of silver and gold’ (Hiraṇyavarṇāṃ hariṇīṃ suvarṇarajata-srajām | Candrāṃ hiraṇmayīṃ Lakṣmīṃ jātavedo mamāvaha). The epic literature further develops the concept of Śrī-Lakṣmī, and refers to her various traits in different contexts. One epic account about her origin, also much stressed in the Purāṇas, is that she was churned out of the ocean by the gods and demons along with such other things as the Uccaiśravas horse, wine, nectar, etc., and she fell to the share of the great god Viṣṇu. But her close association with Kubera is also emphasised in some passages of the Mahābhārata; in II. 10, 19, she is described as attending in the company of Nalakubera (sometimes described as Kubera's son) the court of Kubera, and in III. 168, 3, the Yakṣeśa is described as ‘‘united with Lakṣmī’’. In some later epic passages, she is expressly named as his consort, and the ideological union of the goddess of prosperity with the god of riches is easily understandable. Alakṣmī, her inauspicious opposite, also finds place in the epic, and in the 94th chapter of the Vanaparva of the Mahābhārata we are told that Lakṣmī came to the gods, and Alakṣmī to the Asuras, and the Asuras pervaded by Alakṣmī and struck by Kali (the evil age) were destroyed.

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The Buddhist texts also contain numerous references to the goddess Śrī-Lakṣmī, in many of which she is described as devakumārikā and associated with the northern and southern quarters.¹ The auspicious dream dreamt by Triśalā, the mother of Mahāvīra, on the night she conceived the great Jina in her womb, was about this goddess ‘wearing a garland of dināras (gold coins) on her breast and being bathed by two elephants’.