In Our Time - Lakshmi

Episode Date: October 6, 2016

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the origins of the Hindu goddess Lakshmi, and of the traditions that have built around her for over 3,000 years. According to the creation story of the Puranas, she came to existence in the churning of the ocean of milk. Her prominent status grew alongside other goddesses in the mainly male world of the Vedas, as female deities came to be seen as the Shakti, the energy of the gods, without which they would be powerless. Lakshmi came to represent the qualities of blessing, prosperity, fertility, beauty and good fortune and, more recently, political order, and she has a significant role in Diwali, one of the most important of the Hindu festivals. With Jessica Frazier Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Kent Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies at the University of OxfordJacqueline Suthren-Hirst Senior Lecturer in South Asian Studies at the University of Manchesterand Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy at Lancaster UniversityProducer: Simon Tillotson.

Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time, for news about In Our Time, and for recommendations about our archive, please follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoyed the programmes. Hello, Lakshmi is one of the most prominent and popular Hindu goddesses. In one tradition, she emerged when the gods used a mountain and a serpent to churn the ocean of milk, the primeval cosmos, until there she floated, there she emerged, radiant and seated on a lotus flower. She became Vishnu's wife and today as goddess of prosperity and health, her worshippers might pray to her from anything, from a good harvest, to a university place, to political order. Lakshmi's prominence in daily life, though, is not matched by prominence in the early Vedic texts and comes instead from the gathering of stories around her in the last 2,000 years, stories which reflect the beliefs and values of a changing society, or changing societies indeed. With me to discuss the rise of Lakshmi in the Hindu traditions are,

Jessica Frazier, lecturer in religious studies at the University of Kent and a research fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies at the University of Oxford, Jacqueline Sutton Hurst, senior lecturer in South Asian Studies at the University of Manchester, and Chakrabadha Rampasad, Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy at Lancaster University. Jessica Frazier, where do we look for the origins of Lakshmi? Well, goddess is a worship probably from prehistoric time in India as in Europe, but we don't have text to tell us much about them. The first text we have about the worship of goddesses are in the Vedas.

These are texts from around 1,500 to 500 BCE. Lots, a whole pantheon of gods is represented in them, just as in ancient Greece or as an ancient Egypt. And we have gods and goddesses there. We don't have Sri Lakshmi the goddess, but we have ideas that would later become associated with her. An interesting thing about... Do we have Shri? Well, we have two different ideas of goddesses. We have the word Shri, which is going to be associated.

associated with particular concepts of blessing, specifically with concepts of blessing as splendor, vigor, vitality. She's said to be golden. If she's there, your face glows like the moon. And this is 1,500 to 1,000 BC. About 1,500 BC to about 500 BC. So in that period. And we've got different ideas coming together to create Lakshmi. And really what's interesting is you find in these different ideas about four different concepts of blessing, not the same. that are going to coalesce into the goddess we know. They include physical health.

They include the idea of natural fertility. She's said to exist in crops, in cattle. She's what brings children and the vigor and fertility of the earth. You also get, in the idea of Sri, the idea that she's part of the blessing of good governance. Kings, if they are good kings, have her. She's in a throne. She's said to be the Ishwari, the Lady Lord, if you like. And you get the first hints that is well.

as well as physical well-being, as well as natural fertility, as well as political well-being as a blessing as well, she also may come to represent ideas of spiritual blessing, grace, enlightenment. So altogether, they help create the goddess we later know as Sri Lakshmi. Do we, are people praying to her? Are people asking her things? Well, it's a good question. What part does she play in the society of earthlings? The first text that we have, the Vedic texts that talk about these different qualities, are hymns.

They're songs that you sing to the gods. And so people are singing the praises of that Sri who brings a good governance, the Sri who brings a splendid, shining complexion of health. Can we just go back to Shri? It's not quite clear what Shri is for our listeners. Shri being what? Shri is a word that can mean different things.

A lot of these words don't have a very clear and defined meaning. But let's have the main meaning. Let's have the main meaning. The main meaning then would be something to do with blessing. Shri is that which is shining or splendid. And she gets linked with Lakshmi. So this notion of the shining splendid thing that kings have and also the land may have gets linked with this other word Lakshmi, which is something like good fortune.

In fact, there's a word al-Lakshmi, which is bad fortune. And al-Lakshmi is what you want to drive away. Lakshmi is what you want to keep. Now, that's a different kind of idea. It's a different word. It's associated with wealth arriving. It's associated with good luck. But the two different words would come together.

They're linked in a text called the Sri Supta, which is a very late Vedic text from around 400 BC. And they're not yet said to be part of one single goddess, but those two ideas, both associated with the same thing, would come in later texts like the epics and the piranhas, the Mahaparata, to be linked to this one goddess. And there's this great swirl of gods and goddesses. We can talk, as I understand, from the notes from the three,

of Hindu traditions, not one main tradition in different parts of it, India in different ways, different appearances of goddesses have different names and so on. But in the general swirl, this is emerging. And it begins to mean. Jacqueline Sutherland, Sutherland, we mentioned the story of the, let's go straight for it, when she's first really comes to notice. And this is the great story of the churn. So there are earlier versions, but I'm going to tell you the version that we find in the Vishnu Piranha

because it has a backstory, which is very interesting. So there's an angry sage and he's wandering through the forest and he smells a beautiful perfume. He discovers it's coming from a garland. He requests that garland, places it on his head and madly goes on his way through the forest. He meets Indra, the king of the gods and the lord of three worlds, sitting on his elephant. Irrardos. He has thunderbolts like Zeus, doesn't it? Indeed, he's the one.

And he's associated with rain as well, which will be important later on. He throws the garland to Indra as a sign of... of wanting Indra to pay respect to him, really. Indra places it on the head of the elephant, but the elephant is in rut. He's driven mad by the sound, chucks it onto the ground. What's the sound?

The sound of bees in there. There are bees in the garden. In some versions there's bees in it, but it's also that wonderful fragrance that's absolutely driving him insane. It's not a bit too much. It's not really so particular. Oh, God.

On you go. You're far better now. I'm away you go. He throws it onto the front. floor and the sage is even more angry. Then what? Then he curses Indra that the three worlds will suffer poverty, misfortune. All of the things that Jessica was saying, we want to throw away. On to the churn and the birth of luxury.

On to the churn. The churn is a big event and the churn is a first thing. Well, no, the point is here, sorry, Marvin. The point is here that actually the garland represents Shri. It represents these things that he's throwing away in this story. In the churning of the ocean. I want to get to like me. Excuse me, but this is what the programme's about.

So can we get to like me now? Out of the churn. You said that was the back story. So let's go to the churn. Vishnu is asked by the gods to rescue them because their world is in chaos. And the demons or the anti-gods are taking advantage. Vishnu tells them to make a political pact and to rescue the nectar of immortality. from the milk ocean.

Mount Munderer, as you said in the introduction, is made the churning stick, like in a pot of milk being churned into butter. The snake Vasuki is made into the churning rope. Vishnu helps the gods by forming himself into a tortoise which stabilises the stick. He's on the gods' side. He's sitting on the top of the mountain.

And out of the ocean, they churn all sorts of things, including the moon which shiver takes, poison, which the nubes. as the snakes take. And then Dunvuntary, who comes bearing a pot of immortal nectar. After Dunvuntary, and it's important that we realise that Lakshmi actually is only one of the things that comes out of the ocean, Lakshmi emerges standing on a lotus, holding lotus flowers, very, very beautiful, accompanied by the river Ganga and the other rivers who are there to purify her and give her blessings. And elephants who are going to shower her, lustrate her, make her pure and beautiful.

She's adorned with beautiful gold ornaments by the mait craftsmen of the deities. And she approaches Vishnu, Narayana, who is there reclining waiting for her as well. He emerged as one of the major, perhaps one of the two major divine presences or manifestations. That is correct. And in this story and in this particular text, he is definitely understood to be the supreme deity. Lakshmi throws herself, or at least approaches him and puts her head on his chest. and is looking adoringly at him. This makes the gods adore Vishnu and Lakshmi, and it really makes the demons the anti-gods cross.

Would you call this a creation myth? How would you describe these stories, if you were to give them a bit of parcel, and say these are the creationist myths of Indian mythologies and religion? I wouldn't describe this as a creation myth at all. Well, what would you describe it as? I would describe it as, well, it's partly a myth, which is explaining origins.

So it's explaining the origins. Is origin and creation? Are they so different? Never mind. I think they're very different because this isn't the creation at the beginning of the universe, nor is it the creation at the beginning of a world cycle.

Lakshmi will become involved with creation stories much later on, but perhaps we can pick that up a little bit later. I mean, the thing about these stories is that some people, foolishly, foolish people tend to foolishly belittle them, but I think they're heroic and they're very moving.

again, whichever civilisation, these are people like us without the tools of knowledge which we have. The caravan has not moved on, and yet they're determined to make sense of the world, where they came from, what happens in every particular, and they determinedly create these things. It's amazing to see. Marta Reed. Could I just... Can I just have one more? Can I... There's plenty of time. I'm going to go to Ram now. Can we just develop this churning of the ocean of milk? Why is it milk?

Has it any relationship to the milky way? Is that the... the ocean? Is the ocean something they're looking out into space as? Is that the ocean they're looking at? I think with many of these, what we think of as myths, these narratives, they are very carefully composed literary entities, so they have multiple meanings, so they map on. Generally, there tends to be a mapping of, I think, on three levels. One, you have some kind of resonance with the actual observed natural world and certainly therefore the Milky Way has always caught the imagination especially since astronomy began quite early on in India. The second level is when you have the shift to having certain kinds of metaphors. So the Milky Way becomes a milk, the milk then

becomes a source of plenitude, purity, prosperity. And then you have a third level when you have those associations with divine being. with human characteristics so that the stories can be told about them. So that immediately the audience, and to this day, will be thinking in all these three registers at the same time. But it's fascinating that they want to churn up the Milky Way to see what is behind it, to deliver what's behind it to them. There's a sense in which exploration is going on from the very beginning.

Yes. So not only is there a sense of the good and the bad and the unexpected that will come out of this churning because the poison comes up just as much as the nectar of immortality does. And jewels come up. And jewels come up. Exactly. So you have all these different unexpected offerings of the world, but you also then have the glimmer of the theological foundation, literal and theological, of Vishnu,

who takes the form of the tortoise upon which the churning is done. Now, if you see it and I say... Can I see? The tortoise was that particularly wholly at the time? Or why is it? It's a fantastic idea to have the to-but-but-why-the-tortes? I think, again, might be an intersection between two different things. The one is simply the internal logic of the story dictates that it has to rest on something. The mountain has to rest on something.

It's being used as a chair. Exactly. And you do that. But the tortoise, I think, has got associations particularly with longevity. therefore, again, by a semantic rare shift, it comes to signify the eternal nature of God. And I think that to this day, therefore, tortoises continue to be found in many of the temples of Vishnu. So, Lakshmi appears there.

She has in some ways appeared before in the Sri manifestation. But is this where she gets her sort of start, really? Yes. Is everything there for her beginning? with the lotus flower, the beauty and so on. Well, what I think we find with many of these narratives is that as scholars and historians, we see it a certain amount of retrofitting going on.

So clearly what has happened is by the time you get the version, the redaction of this narrative, probably at the start of the common era, clearly all these symbolic associations have already been percolating in popular culture and perhaps there are earlier versions of it that we do not have. So to some extent, it's not a single act of literary creation. It refers back to what has already become a fact, presumably, in popular worship.

But from then on, all subsequent generations are going to look to that story and see that as the authoritative scriptural base for making those associations for Lakshmi. And here, as Jackie pointed out, Jessica and Jessica, she goes across to Vishnu, one of the main gods and looks into his eyes and therefore an alum she becomes his consort, his wife and whatever they become, and she's Shaktah, she becomes his power,

has women become, the power, the goddesses become the power of many kings right the way through. That's another fascinating thing. So let's talk about that power between them. Why does he need her and why does she go to him? Yeah, it's interesting. There's a wonderful bit where when she comes out,

she sees Vishnu and knows that he's the one. for her and that's important because in previous stories and myths, actually in the Mahabharata, a very famous text, she's associated with other kings, with Dharma, who's the king of justice or Indra king of the gods. Even when she goes to live with demons, they become just and good and kingly as well. The implication is, gods are always symbolic. The implication is that she is the good well-being and good fortune that accrues to anyone who is just, any king who is a just ruler and brings goodness and well-being to the community as a whole. She brings it to the king. She brings it to him, and that's important. That's part of this idea.

And indeed, actually, it reflects the idea of what a wife does for her husband. If you look at the ancient text, the laws of Manu, which is about the ideal roles of people in society and Hinduism. It says a wife should obey her husband. It's very old school in that sense. But it also says if the wife is not happy, the blessing of the household that she brings will not come. And she's not happy she leaves. Well, it doesn't go quite so far as to say that a wife should. Your notes that she leaves if she's not being treated well enough. Your Ram says that. I'm not sure if the laws of man who says a wife that should leave her husband, but it is true that Lakshmi will leave Vishnu or any king who does not deserve her. And that's important. She said to be fickle.

And the idea is that if you don't deserve her blessing, she will move on to a different figure who deserves it more. I think again here there is some kind of an addressing of both the human reality and an emerging theological notion. which is that you want to find a balance between a particular gender role which says that the wife is conventionally dependent upon and associated with and has her fullest realization in the domestic household of her husband. But at the same time, you also need to find a way of permitting her the autonomy and the agency to depart.

So again, there are different texts, Manu might undo it, but there are other texts of that time which talk about when it is. legitimate for a wife to leave. So the same way, there are times when it's legitimate for Lakshmi to leave. Jackie, you wanted to come in. Yes, in particular, if the woman in the household is not performing her duties, being attended to her husband and so on, then sometimes in later texts you find the notion that Lakshmi in the sense of good fortune

and of having sons and grandsons and of having good reputation will also leave the house. So as Ram's talking about, there is these important. mappings of different levels. So sometimes it might not be the actual wife who leaves, but it is that the household is deserted by Lakshmi in that sense. How liquid is the relationship between gods and goddesses in Hindu traditions? It's very fluid and it varies enormously from time and from different regions in India. Is there any norm? Is there any, we're all trying to be like this? Or does it, is it wonderfully unbalanced? Sometimes people have said there are two types of goddess.

There's the goddess who is the consort of her husband who is a beautiful domesticated goddess who doesn't create any trouble. And there's the independent, single, fierce goddess who represents that independent side. But when you actually look at the texts and at practice, you'll see it's very, very much more fluid than that. And you find all sorts of traditions negotiating those relationships in different ways. Because one of the things about these goddesses,

is that there are savage goddesses, there's Carly, they're monstrous warrior goddesses. We don't have a sort of mother god and idea in the Christian tradition. The mother of God is the great centre. But we don't have that, do we? Well, I don't want to get too far away from Luchme, but actually that's actually not the case.

So if we start with Lachmi, one of the things that Indra, who is that God who has been cursed, if you remember, at the end of the Churning of the Ocean story, he actually praises Lakshmi and calls her the mother of the universe. So Lakshmi is mother of the universe as well as mother of beings. But if you look at Kali in some Bengali texts, for example,

Kali is precisely described as mother of the universe. She shows compassion. Her vindictive qualities are directed against ignorance, against the failure to understand what deities like. So I was wrong, instead of being no mothers, there's many mothers. There's mothers all over the place. Quite a lot of them don't have children, but that's another story. That might be a kid.

They're not the mother of God. Well, I'm going to go back to Ram here. Let's come to the 11th century and sort of bring it up to date, speaking modern times. Lakshmi becomes the embodiment of divine grace. So let's start from there. What ideas develop from that embodiment? Well, so about the 10th, 11th century in southern India,

there was a thinker who's probably one of the critical theologians of Hindu tradition called Ramanujah. He, in a sense, systematized this entire body of narratives of devotional songs and hymns in which the relationship between Lakshmi and Vishnu was constantly being read and re-read according to the stories as they were underrated. He made it into a much more schematic theological framework. in which he took this aspect of Vishnu to be the representation of God as sovereign, as being the ruler as well as the source of justice. But essential to that conception of God was that he had Lakshmi as consort, so that the tradition that he inaugurated to this day is called Sri.

Vaishnava, that is to say, followers of Vishnu with Sri, who by this time is now completely associated with Lakshmi. So what happens is, in the theological reading, those aspects of God in which the engagement and the love of the divine for the human is manifested in everyday engagement, in the auspiciousness of the household, in the prosperity of the community, in the welfare of the world, they all are deified as Lakshmi. So that although again you have the primacy of a god conceived as male, he is inadequate. He is only partially what the view of the divine is.

You also need Lakshmi as the manifestation of his grace. Jessica, Jessica, pressure, Can you outline some of the changes in society which are paralleled by changing in the notion of what Lakshmi represents? Well, if deities tend to have this symbolic element, which is what gives the meaning to their worshippers, and Lakshmi symbolism is happiness, prosperity and blessing, then actually it's interesting.

Through her, you can chart the ways in which Indian society's kind of economic base, actually, is changing through time, that she has an agricultural side, that she's even said to reside in cow dung. That sounds very odd to people reading the text, but that obviously land does not yield its fertile blessings without fertiliser. And that reflects the concerns of an agricultural society even today. But she's also in time associated with material wealth, with gems, with coins.

And I think that reflects the idea that in the early period you don't even have coins. Gradually a mercantile class is emerging. And indeed still today, it's the merchants of society, who are particularly associated with her. Also that she's linked with royalty, again, the emergence of city-states, of indeed nations and empires in India, is reflected through the idea that Lakshmi

has a specifically political form of blessing. How is that, can you just crystallise that a bit more, please? Yeah, she's, I mean, the idea that, especially in this notion of Sri, that she is associated with elephants, who tend to symbolise royalty, that she's said to reside in the throne in early text, that she's associated with Vishnu,

who is a kingly god. And all of this kind of brings together the idea that she is thought of as a royal splendor, royal blessing as well. So you've got these different sides of society and notions of what blessing is coming together. One of the things I think it's interesting about her is that as society gets affluent enough, she also becomes associated with not material blessing but spiritual blessing. She symbolizes grace, enlightenment, the lotus upon which she sits as a symbol reminds us. amongst other things, that after the mud of the soil, a lotus rises up and produces something higher

and more beautiful and more spiritual kind of blessing. Jackie, when depicting Lakshmi's image, what flexibility do we have? We heard an idea of the evolution there and broad outline. What flexibility do we have about it? What's essential to her that is not shared by other goddesses? There's two very standard depictions that we find of her. One is this goddess standing in the lotus with carrying the lotuses.

So those lotuses are very much a symbol of Lakshmi. And we have very... What are they a symbol of themselves? Well, they're almost certainly originally a symbol of fertility. As Jessica was saying, we have some images, very, very early images from about the second century BC, first century BC, actually on Buddhist monuments, of Lakshmi seated and these royal elephants or these elephants of fertility rain, showering her, and the lotus as symbols of blessing and of fertility.

That carries on right the way through her representations in various forms. The other main way in which she's represented is massaging the feet of Vishnu when he's lying on the cosmic snake above the cosmic ocean. And that becomes a symbol of her devotion. to Vishnu as the devotee should be devoted to God. Vishnu and Lakshmi seem to represent the conservative, if I can use that word with a very small seat, the conservative state of union between a god and a deity,

a god and a goddess. They are stable, they are in love with each other, see they are married. And they carry on being like that, don't they? Well, they do, but there is development in later texts. So the Lakshmi Tantra, which might be a... around the 9th to the 12th century in the common era, is a text where we still have the framework of Lakshmi and Vishnu.

We still have the story of the churning of the ocean. But actually in the text, it's Lakshmi who takes priority. She is the power of Vishnu, but she's the power of Vishnu in the sense that she is the one to be worshipped. Vishnu really fades completely out of the picture in the entirety of the text, apart from its original frame story. So there... Why do you think that is?

Why? Why at that time did that happen? Well, in this particular text, it comes from a puncturatra tradition, which is a Vaishnava worshipping tradition, which was originally quite eclectic, and growing out of that tradition, and possibly influenced by Sharptor traditions coming up. In other words, traditions where the goddess is worshipped as the supreme reality. We get these tantric influences appearing in the text where Lakshmi is associated with the sound at the heart. of the universe, as the power which creates the universe, as the material base of the universe. And the worshipper, depending on whether they're at an initial stage or various stages, right up to a spiritual seeker, will be worshipping Lakshmi for the reasons that Jessica

was pointing out. So there'll be prosperity and worldly blessings, but also the grace of Lakshmi and having her grace. And this is all part of a wider religious movement that's developing in that period. Ram, can I come to you to talk about prayer? The idea, are these God, I mentioned it briefly earlier. Do you make offerings to them, I presume you do?

Do you pray? Are there forms of prayer? Do you expect your prayers to be answered? Are there examples of the prayers being answered? Is it something that although it's over there, is it where we can understand out of the tradition of our own culture? Yes. I mean, I think the thing about prayer is

that it is Easier perhaps to see the transactional nature of prayer where you offer something to the divine in expectation of something given back in return. I will be good if you do this. Yes, exactly. And you literally offer particular kinds of things, you know, food staffs and so forth. That brings to the foreground in a very concrete way what is really at the heart of prayer in every. any tradition. But you tend to see this in the Hindu traditions in a very obvious way, especially if, in the case of Lakshmi, what you are asking for is literal wealth. And the

goddess you're worshipping has gold coins coming out of her hands. So I think what we should do is making a distinction between a very much deeper structural fact about prayer, which is transactional in whatever tradition it is, because it is entering into a particular. compact with God. And the Hindu tradition and also to the Buddhist tradition's sort of tendency to represent all of this in very iconographically detailed ways. Excuse me. Otherwise in which, actually, is telling you how to live your life in the way that we know from other religions. You must do this, otherwise your prayer will not be answered. I think with her there is much less of that punitive side of worship that you might find with some of the other gods where transgression does bring problems with you.

To some extent, of course, there is the modelling that Lakshmi offers, which is that if you don't have an entire form of careful household conduct, she deserts you. but normally she is much less of a goddess who manifests herself in anger at your misbehavior. Jessica. It's just interesting what you said. She's sometimes been likened to the Virgin Mary and the Catholic tradition in that she's not about sort of telling you ethically what to do.

Krishna does that, Jesus does that and so on. She's much more about giving you grace, even when you don't expect it, even in situations where you need to be lifted up from a difficult situation. In that sense, she forms the grace bestowal. figure that is quite similar from the character of Mary. Vishnu has other appearances. His avatars include Rama and Krishna.

Where does she figure when he turns into Rama or Krishna? Well, there are different views on this, but at some level, as Jackie's already pointed out, all the goddesses have a certain link between them. They're all forms, in some text at least, of the great goddess Mahadevi or of the Shakti, the female energy of the divine. So that when Vishnu incarnates, Christian god incarnates once, Vishnu incarnates many times, often he has a wife, and sometimes that wife is identified with Lakshmi. And in some cases you can really see that connection.

Rama's wife, Sita, is also a good wife. Even Krishna's wife, Rukhmi, is also a good and queenly wife. So there's kind of a shared symbolism clustering around that kind of role. Perhaps more interesting, though, is that actually because all the goddesses are Mahadevi, they all share this Shakti. Lakshmi, in some texts like the Devi Mahatma is also identified with the fierce goddesses that you mentioned Kali, Durga, so that in a sense the warrior goddess

and her power is just another side of the female divine from the soft power of the wife. Both are different sides of the female. It's not all one feminine sort of cliché. Jackie, there's an 18th century text called The Perfect Wife by Triumbaka, which represents Lakshmi as a model, the perfect wife for other women.

Can you talk about that? Well, this is a rather special kind of text. It's quite unusual, and it was only really directed to the Brahmin women at the Marita Court. So we need to be quite clear that this isn't talking to everybody. Lachmi there needs to be worshipped at the beginning of the day. And in that sense, she provides a model of the woman, excuse me, who is attentive to her family and gains blessings with her family from worshipping Lakshmi. And if she's not worshipped on the threshold before sunrise, then there is this danger that this good fortune that we've spoken about will vanish. It's very interesting that before she feeds herself in the morning, having fed her husband, she must also make a food offering to Jashda, who is a Lakshmi, the opposite of Lakshmi, to try and avert misfortune from coming into the household. So in that sense, she's a role model only in so far as she's linked up with the woman's daily duties, the Brahmin woman's daily duties, and protects the household. There's a sense in which these gods and goddesses like others all over the place represent what people want them to be because people want their society to be like that.

And so they're inventing them for their own purposes. Well, I think inventing is a very strong word. I would rather see it as Ram has said in terms of the notion. These are very important notions to all societies. I agree with that. But nothing comes out of nothing. They are there because people want them to live there. Presumably people want them to be there as models as we've got with this thing.

Or as being looked after it. But also as saying our society is okay if we do this. Absolutely. And then they're personified in these sorts of forms. Ram. I think the striking feature on this issue with Hindu traditions is that you don't then enter into a contestation between, of what is the right and what is the wrong depiction of these deities. These different ideologies of interpreting what gods and goddesses mean coexist,

so that Triambaka's text, for example, is challenged almost within a generation in other parts of India where Lakshmi is worshipped. So there's no one way, it isn't if I am the way, the truth and the life one person, doesn't exist at all. It's many manifold all the time. So you can, Vishnu can be the man, but somebody who says, well, my man is, and move on to someone else. That's right. So what happens is that, again, sort of a balance, and it's sometimes precarious, but mostly it's very fruitful, which is that you might have a background commitment to how all these stories feed back to your story, to your commitment, to your revelation.

But at the same time, the manifoldness of the universe, is expressed in the manifoldness of beliefs. And I think that has always been a fundamental pluralistic aspect of all these Hindu texts and traditions. That pluralism and polytheism actually serves variety very well. Doesn't you undercoming, Jessica? Just briefly on that. I think you're absolutely right, and it's really important.

What's so distinctive and exciting about Hinduism is that it says there are many different things that are good for society and for the individual. So as well as Lakshmi, you've got Kali, who represents disorder, destruction, and an acknowledgement of the necessity of death for us and all things, including society, so that the radical extremes of life

are all encompassed within a much broader notion of understanding the whole of reality, not just specific virtues for what is good in society. It has a much larger vision. How does Lakshmi come back to you for a moment? How does Lakshmi stand in that group of people? Is she outstanding? Is she at the centre?

Is she more narrowly focused? For different groups of people. She's very, very important for merchant communities, for Gujarati communities in this country, for example, at the end of October, they will be offering Lachmi Pujra at Duvali, and that's a very important time of the year when they will open their business accounts for the next year.

Open the business, because she will bring them good luck if they open it. Absolutely, yes. In Vaishnava traditions, she is very important. In other traditions, she'll be less important. We have some chola bronzes from the 16th century, where Shiva and Paroati are clearly the main deities. At their marriage, Vishnu and Lakshmi are there in attendance

and are portrayed in very beautiful, much smaller figures. So sometimes she's important, sometimes she's not, but that notion of auspiciousness is obviously very important across the board. It's quite difficult, brought up one, to get one's head around the manifold nature of it, the fact that if you, one thing's happening there and another different, maybe very different thing is happening there, people, as it were, on the same plane. But I think in Christian traditions, you find that as well. So if you went to a particular Baptist church,

you'd find something very, very radically different going on from in a Roman Catholic church here. I agree with that. I agree with that, but not the forms of those are. that were running the show. I mean, the Baptists believe in one, they believe in Jesus Christ, and you're not likely to find that they suddenly believe in somebody else as the originator of their religion. And I think that's what we're talking about, aren't we? Or are we? Am I up the creek here? Jessica, you want to say something? Just briefly on that. I take your point, but I also think I once took a Hindu group to a Christian church and they'd heard about Jesus as the

God of love and goodness and blessing. And they went into this Catholic church and saw a suffering, tortured man. And then they went to the passion of Christ and came back to me the next day and said, I'm very confused. What does Jesus represent? Is it pain? Is it suffering? It's love. And I said, it's love, but it has many different sides. And I think that's helpful. Often Hinduism is pointing towards similar related concepts of the divine, but it's not a single thing. It's a very complex idea. Ram, I was going to say, going back to some, an earlier point I made, I think what is striking and therefore in the Western eye puzzling about Hindu and Buddhist representations is the way in which the human wrestling with the plural manifestations of the divine is so iconographically precise. So each of this is manifested in a particular form.

Each particular form, even Lakshmi can take on so many different ways of being manifested. So I think is that that is confusing. Sorry. Can you just give us one or two other different ways in which she can be manifested? Well, so she would, as Jackie had already pointed out, although there is a set of themes associated with her, she is seldom represented very clearly with the association with jewelry and wealth and gold coins and so on in the traditional Sri Vaishnava temples where she is primarily the consort who stands. by the side equally with Vishnu. And that kind of manifestation

hardly ever happens in mercantile communities where her role as the independent emblem of material prosperity is so much more important. Jackie, can I come to you? In India, let's talk about at the moment. Is she seen as empowering a woman or is she seen as restrictive?

Or both are you going to say, aren't you? I know you're going to say it. No, you're not. What you say what you want to say. She is seen as empowering within a household. It's empowering for the woman within the household, if the household and the lineage functions well. Some feminists would argue that's not at all empowering

because that actually makes women subject to patriarchal norms. Some other feminists would say, well, let's look to these female deities for finding role models for women and might emphasise very strongly her notion as shuck to your power. without which the males cannot actually operate. And therefore that gives her an authority in that role that if we look on it from a very Western patriarchalised lens, we might not see at all.

That's what I think we've been missing in this thing because you've talked about that and so on. But I got from Mull and Outson and stuff that I'm reading, that Shakti, she brought power to it. Chacti was the power, was the energy without which the partner, the consort, the husband, faded away. Absolutely.

That's really vital to her role. That's really big. That's just not looking up to the cooking, is it? It's certainly not. No. Just on that way. I mean, actually, that idea is quite widespread. Even if you look at the Old Testament, the character of wisdom,

is a powerful figure who helps God to create the universe. If you look at Egyptian myth, ISIS helps the great God to create the universe. The notion of power as being fundamentally female is actually quite a widespread idea in many different. religions. A Hindu woman once said to me, she's about to get married the next day, we need goddesses like Lakshmi, as well as Dorga the warrior goddess, who I like. She said, I also need a goddess who represents what I can be for my husband, my children and my household.

Powerful in a soft but important way, what makes it feminist is that she's autonomous. She's powerful and she can leave if she's not treated well. That's what's central. Where is she most celebrated today, Ram? I think she's most popular in the diaspora especially in the mercantile communities, in parts of in India as well, where she's so closely tied, as Jackie said, to the annual rhythms of accounting of sales at particular times of the festivals and so forth. That's where she's, I think, most publicly manifest

so that it's not at all rare to go into shops and find her behind, you know, the Gillers counter. Well, thank you very much. Thanks to Jessica Bresia. Jacqueline Sthern Hurst and Chakrabati Ram Prasad. If you have a topic for us that you think deserves a big radio audience, please send your idea through at our website or on Twitter at BBC In Our Time by the 28th of October.

One of those will be the subject of our programme on 1st of December. Next week we'll be discussing plasma, the most abundant form of ordinary matter in the universe. Thank you for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. Go on then. But you just starts by me saying, what did I miss out?

And then you tell me, and then I need to say another word. He's looking at you. Come on, Yon. I suppose I'd like to tell you a story that's associated with a big temple in eastern India, called the Juggernaut temple at Puri. It has a 16th century origin, and it's a great one for showing Latshmi's power. So, Lakshmi in that temple is worshipped along with her husband, Jogganat and his elder brother, Baleram.

and it was the custom in the temple for the icons of the deities to process around the town. One day the story goes, Lakshmi wanted to go out on her own and to process around the town. She found a Brahmin woman who was not doing her chores properly, and she explained to how she should do them. The Brahmin woman took no notice. Her household was afflicted with poverty. She went to a very low-cast woman who she really shouldn't have been associating with, according to the rules of her family at that time.

The woman had already done her worship and was looking to Lakshmi's grace. And so she actually gives prosperity to that household. When she gets home, Bollarama, her husband's elder brother, says, what were you doing, consorting with these people? And she curses them to poverty and leaves the house, basically.

She pitches up in an area of the city, alongside these people who her male counterparts think are not worthy of their worship. And terrible affliction hits the royal deity family. And in the end, they have to beg at houses for food. They arrive at Lakshmi's house. She serves them, and they suddenly realize what the power of Lakshmi is and invite her back, but she drives a bargain. And the bargain is that that temple should be open to people of any social background whatsoever.

and that to this day continues at that temple. Right. In a way, it's a nice comment on the idea that being upper class, upper caste, is what's going to bring you good fortune. Lakshmi subverts that. She says this is something that you earn by good behaviour in all kinds of different ways. So she's quite a, in some ways, quite a subversive message. And it also speaks again to the larger Hindu tendency

to narrativise social struggles at some point when the composers of these stories realize what's going on in society. That's exactly why 2,000 years ago, when you start having the whole sort of the growth of agriculture around the Indo-Ganchetic Basin, the growth of the first empires, the association with coinage, the association with lotuses and water lilies

in places which have been flooded prior to, you know, they're being planted. They all get retrofitted into the story of Lakshmi. And I think Lakshmi perhaps exactly because she often seems to be in the story of others shows how important the emergence of oral narratives to represent what happening in Indian society are manifested. And I think a great deal of what we understand about Indian society across time can be seen by paying close attention precisely to these very rich and characterable narratives. It's what you said in a way is people see these myths as silly stories

but in fact there's then story versions of theology, of philosophy and of ethics and indeed of social and political philosophy happening kind of through that meaning. And I think I will say one thing that because of the association of the notion of myth to something less than true

in a particular development of modern Western thought, Hindus themselves often get offended when they are told our story is not a myth. And then of course you have academic saying, no, we mean by myth something very, very different. What we really mean is a way in which a narrative makes sense of reality. And I think that's something that still shows us that people aren't comfortable with how these religions are being studied today.

But I want to give a compliment. I think it's important that we started off talking about a goddess. But actually what you did was you turned it into a conversation about the way that deities work and the way that Hinduism is having many deities and it's seeming very confusing actually is about ideas and symbols and people's bigger concerns coming to light through these theology. So you managed to turn something specific into a broader kind of insight into how Hinduism works. I think people need actually. Well, I hope so. And here's the first reaction of our producer, Simon, with him making an offer

you can't refuse. Which is tea. There are more than 700 programs to download and listen to for free from in our time website. We'll also find a reading list for this episode.