Dhānya Lakṣmī (धान्य लक्ष्मी) is the goddess of dhānya, grain, within the Aṣṭalakṣmī, the eight forms of Lakṣmī honoured together in South Indian devotion. Her presence in the litany is a reminder of what wealth first meant in India: not coin but the filled granary. In an agrarian civilisation the harvest was the primary form of prosperity, and the goddess of fortune was from the beginning a goddess of the fertile earth, of rice and rain.
Iconography
She is shown in green garments, the colour of the standing crop, usually eight-armed, holding sheaves of paddy, sugarcane, and other produce alongside the lotus, mace and the gestures of protection and giving. The imagery draws on the oldest layer of Lakṣmī's cult, the association with śrī, the glow of fertility and growth celebrated in the Śrī Sūkta, where the goddess is invoked as moist, abundant, dwelling in cow-dung and harvest.
Worship
Dhānya Lakṣmī receives no great independent cult; she is worshipped with her seven sisters in the Aṣṭalakṣmī liturgy, and implicitly at every harvest festival, from Pongal in the Tamil country to the new-grain rites of the north, where the first rice of the season is received as the goddess entering the house. Her place in the eight keeps the litany honest: before wealth can be counted, it must be grown.
Further reading
- Bhattacharyya, N. N. History of the Sakta Religion. Munshiram Manoharlal, 1996
- Coburn, Thomas B. Encountering the Goddess: A Translation of the Devi-Mahatmya. State University of New York Press, 1991
- Kinsley, David. Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine. University of California Press, 1986
- Kinsley, David. Tantric Visions of the Divine Feminine: The Ten Mahavidyas. University of California Press, 1997
- Sircar, D. C. The Sakta Pithas. Motilal Banarsidass, 1973
See also
This entry was last revised on 31 July 2026.