Lakshmi, Goddess of Fortune

A great lotus opens on the water. On it sits a goddess, perfectly calm, in a pink sari, her face gentle and radiant. On either side of her stands an elephant hung with garlands. Their trunks reach high and pour water over her like a kindly rain. In one hand she holds a lotus flower. With the other she lets gold coins fall. This is Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and good fortune in the Hindu tradition.

She is the goddess of youth and beauty too, and she is known by many lovely names. People call her Sri, which means prosperity. People call her Padma or Kamala, the one who dwells in the lotus. Every one of these names calls up light and abundance.

Hindu legend tells where Lakshmi came from. Long ago, the gods and the demons churned the primeval ocean of milk together, searching for the nectar of immortality. That great event is called the Samudra Manthan. The sea of milk heaved, its silver waves swirled, and the white foam burst open like a giant flower. From the middle of that foam a figure stepped out, dressed all in white, glowing with youth and beauty, a lotus raised in her hand. It was Lakshmi, appearing before a world that had never seen such beauty. The legend says that each of the gods gave her a gift to welcome her arrival.

The image of Lakshmi is bound up with the lotus. She is usually painted standing or sitting on a large lotus, holding a water pot and a single lotus flower, blue or pink. The lotus stands for purity and beauty, because it grows up out of the mud and still stays clean. Beside her there are always elephants in fine trappings, a symbol of royal power. Sometimes they pour water over her.

Lakshmi does not travel alone. She is the wife of the god Vishnu, the Preserver of the universe in Hindu belief. The two are often worshipped together under the name Lakshmi-Narayana. It is told that when Vishnu comes down to earth in another form, Lakshmi takes a new form beside him. When Vishnu became Prince Rama, she was Sita. When he became Krishna, she was Queen Rukmini. Devotees believe she stays beside her husband at every moment. To them, the couple shows the harmony of a husband and wife who lean on each other. In Hindu tradition, Vishnu bears a mark on his chest called the Srivatsa. It is seen as the symbol of his wife Lakshmi. When Vishnu rests on the back of the thousand-headed serpent, the story goes, Lakshmi sits beside him and massages his left foot.

Lakshmi does not have just one form. Devotees worship her in eight forms, called the Ashtalakshmi, standing for eight different sources of wealth. One form is wealth in money. Another is wealth in food and harvests. Yet another is wealth in courage and heroic strength. Wealth here means far more than gold and silver: she is also the wealth of knowledge, of children, of victory and of royal power.

Each year there is one festival when countless Hindu families turn toward Lakshmi. It is Diwali, the festival of lights, held around October and November. This is what makes her feel so close. She comes to each home. On the nights of Diwali, a family needs only to set a small lamp on the doorstep, in the hope that she will stop by. That small, warm light is the invitation for the goddess to step inside. Vishnu preserves the whole universe, and Shiva is the god of the dance of destruction and rebirth. Lakshmi, though, bends down to the smallest lamp a family lights on its porch. Any home that shines with lamps on Diwali night becomes a place to welcome her.

Her image was once present in central Vietnam too. The Museum of Cham Sculpture in Da Nang keeps a statue of Lakshmi from the 11th century. The Cham worshipped her as a goddess of good fortune and happiness, and prayed to her for wealth and plenty. The Cham are a people of south-central Vietnam whose ancestors lived in the ancient kingdom of Champa. In Indian art, Lakshmi usually has two or four arms and sits on a lotus with all her emblems in hand. In Cham art, though, she is sometimes carved very simply, with nothing in her hands and no elaborate detail.

So there was a time when the Cham in Vietnam, too, looked up at her image carved in stone and quietly hoped she would bring good harvests and a peaceful life.

At the Museum of Cham Sculpture in Da Nang, the goddess seated on the lotus is still there, carved in a block of stone a millennium old. And every Diwali season, millions of lamps light up again in every corner, waiting for her to stop by. And the lotus still blooms, rising clean out of muddy water, as it did when she stepped out of the ocean of milk.