Parashara had been counting the children of Bhrigu. Bhrigu and his wife Khyati, he said, had two sons, the gods Dhata and Vidhata, and a daughter, Lakshmi, who became the wife of Bhagavan Vishnu. Maitreya stopped him there. “It is heard that Lakshmi arose from the ocean of milk when it was churned for amrita. How then do you say she was born of Bhrigu, from Khyati?” Parashara answered first with what Lakshmi is. She is the mother of the worlds, she never leaves Bhagavan’s side, and she is eternal; as Shri Vishnu pervades everything, so does she. He is meaning and she is speech. He is the rule and she is right conduct; he is understanding and she is intellect; he is dharma and she is the good act; he is the creator and she the creation. In the yajna he is the sacrifice and she the dakshina paid for it; he is the fire itself, as Vasudeva, and she is Svaha. He is Shankara and she is Gauri. He is the sun and she its light, he the moon and she its unfading radiance, he the wind and she the motion that carries the world, he the ocean and she its wave. He is Indra and she Indrani, he Yama and she Dhumorna, he Kubera and she Riddhi, he Skanda and she Devasena. He is the lamp and she the light of it, he the tree and she the creeper on it, he the day and she the night, he the bridegroom and she the bride, he the banner and she the pennant that flies from it; he is greed and she is thirst, he is love and she its pleasure. Among gods, animals and men, whatever is called male is Hari and whatever is called female is Shri, and beyond those two there is nothing at all. Then Parashara came to the story. “The history of Shri that you ask about I heard myself from the rishi Marichi. Listen.”
Once Durvasa, born of a portion of Shankara, was wandering the earth, and he wandered in those days in the dress and manner of a madman, going wherever his feet took him. He came on a vidyadhari holding a divine garland of santanaka flowers, and its fragrance had filled the forest so completely that the creatures living there could hardly bear to leave it. The madman in him wanted the garland. He asked the slender, large-eyed vidyadhari for it, and she bowed to him with respect and gave it, and he set it on his own head and roamed on. Then he saw, coming toward him with the gods around him, Indra, lord of the three worlds, riding the elephant Airavata, and the elephant was in must.
Durvasa, like the madman he was playing, lifted the garland, loud with maddened bees, from his head and threw it at Indra. Indra caught it and set it on Airavata’s head, where it shone the way the Ganga shines on the peak of Kailasa. The must had blinded the elephant. The scent drew him, he reached up with his trunk, smelled the garland, and threw it to the ground. Durvasa saw it fall, and his anger came up in him all at once. “Indra, the pride of wealth has corrupted your heart. You are insolent beyond measure. The garland I gave you, the home of all beauty, you did not value at all. You did not bow and say what a great kindness it was. You did not set it on your own head with a glad face. You have given my garland no worth whatsoever, and so the glory of your three worlds will be destroyed. You take me for a Brahmin like the others, and that is why your pride has let you insult me. Well then: since you threw my garland on the ground, your three worlds too will soon be without Shri. The whole moving and unmoving world fears my anger, and you in your great pride have insulted me.”
Indra got down from Airavata at once and set about pacifying the sinless muni, bowing and pleading. Durvasa heard him out with no change in his face. “Indra, I am not a kind-hearted man. There is no room in my heart for forgiveness. Those munis are other men; understand that I am Durvasa. Gautama and the rest have made you bold for nothing. Remember this: there is no forgiveness anywhere in Durvasa. The compassionate Vasishtha and men like him praised you so highly that you grew proud enough to set out and insult me too. Who is there in the three worlds today who sees my blazing matted hair and my crooked brow and is not afraid? Why do you keep up this pretense of pleading? What will come of all this talk? I cannot forgive.” With that the vipra walked away, and Indra rode Airavata home to Amaravati.
The Three Worlds Bereft of Shri
From then on the three worlds, Indra’s with them, went without Shri. Trees and creepers withered and rotted. Yajnas stopped. Ascetics gave up their tapas, and no one’s mind turned to charity or to dharma any longer. Greed and its companions took the worlds over, every being lost its sattva, and people longed for trifles. Where sattva is, Lakshmi stays, and sattva goes wherever Lakshmi goes; in those who have no Shri, how can there be sattva, and without sattva, how can the virtues stay? Without virtues a man has no strength and no valor, and the weak, powerless man is insulted by everyone. Insult a man who was once respected and his judgment itself goes bad. So it went down the chain, until the three worlds stood without Shri and without sattva, and then the daityas and the danavas attacked. Greedy for what the gods had, they fought savagely against gods who had no sattva and no wealth left, and in the end the gods lost. Indra and all the gods, with Agni at their head, went to Pitamaha Brahma and took refuge with him.
Brahma heard the whole account and sent them on. “Go to Bhagavan Vishnu and take refuge in him. He is lord of the high and the low, the destroyer of asuras. He seems to be the cause of the world’s origin, its continuance and its destruction, and in truth he is not even that cause; he is lord of all, master of the Prajapatis, all-pervading, endless, unconquerable, the cause of pradhana and of purusha, unborn and yet become the effect, and he loves those who come to him for shelter. Go to him and he will surely bless you.” Then Brahma went with them himself, to the northern shore of the ocean of milk, and there he praised Vishnu with the most auspicious words he had. He bowed to Narayana, subtlest of the subtle and heaviest of the heavy, the support of all, unmanifest, indivisible, wearing every form, lord of all, endless, unborn, imperishable; beyond pradhana and purusha, the one whom seekers of liberation meditate on, untouched by the gunas of prakriti, beyond the kala and the kashtha and the muhurta by which time is counted. He named the chain of cause and effect that runs down from him, mahat to ahankara to the tanmatras to the elements to the egg of the world and to Brahma and Daksha inside it, and called him the cause of every cause and the effect of every effect, the enjoyer and the enjoyed, the maker and the made. He praised the supreme pada of Vishnu, pure, neither gross nor subtle, in a ten-thousandth part of whose ten-thousandth part the whole power to make worlds rests; the pada that yogis see through the Omkara, that the gods and the munis and Shankara and Brahma himself do not know, and from whose shaktis Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva arise. “Achyuta, Vishnu, be pleased with us, your devotees, and give us darshan.” The gods bowed after him and asked the same: be pleased and show yourself; we bow to that supreme pada of yours which even Bhagavan Brahma does not know. Then Brihaspati and the devarshis spoke for all of them. They bowed to the first Yajnapurusha, the creator, the undivided Paramatma, lord of what has been and what will be, made of yajna, and they named the defeated: Brahma standing here with us, Shankara with the Rudras, the twelve Adityas, Pushan, Pavaka with the fires, the Ashvins, the eight Vasus, the Maruts, the Sadhyas, the Vishvedevas and Indra the king of the gods, every one of them beaten by the daitya army and come to your refuge. Praised like that, Parameshvara appeared before them, bearing conch and discus and mace. No one had seen that form before, a mass of radiance. Pitamaha and all the gods bowed, their eyes trembling with the shock of it, and praised the lotus-eyed Bhagavan again. You are Brahma, they said, and you are Shankara who holds the Pinaka; you are Indra, Agni, Pavana, Varuna, Surya and Yama; you are the Vasus, the Maruts, the Sadhyas and the Vishvedevas; you are the yajna and the vashatkara, the Omkara and Prajapati, the knowledge and the thing known and the whole world. “Vishnu, the daityas have defeated us and we come to you in distress. Be pleased, and make us strong again with your tejas. Until a being comes to your refuge he has poverty and desire, delusion and sorrow. Give all of us gods back the tejas we have lost.”
The Churning of the Ocean of Milk
Hari was pleased with the humble gods, and he gave them work. “I will increase your tejas again. Now do as I say. Bring all the oshadhis, with the daityas beside you, and cast them into the ocean of milk for amrita. Make Mandarachala the churning-staff and the naga Vasuki the rope, and churn out the amrita with the daityas and the danavas, with my help. Win the daityas over gently. Tell them, ‘Those who help in this work will share equally in its fruit.’ Drink the amrita that comes out of the churned ocean and you will be strong and immortal. And I will contrive it that your enemies the daityas do not get the amrita, and their share is only the toil of churning.”
When the god of gods had said it, the gods made their treaty with the daityas and set about getting the amrita. Gods, danavas and daityas brought oshadhis of every kind and threw them into the ocean of milk, whose water was as clear as the autumn sky. They made Mandarachala the staff and Vasuki the rope, and they began to churn with all their force. Bhagavan placed them himself: the gods on the side of Vasuki’s tail, the daityas at his mouth. The fire of the mighty serpent’s breath poured out of that mouth and scorched the daityas until the tejas went out of them, and the same breath-wind drove clouds down toward the tail, where they rained on the gods, and the gods’ strength grew.
Bhagavan himself, in the form of Kurma, moved about in the ocean of milk and became the support on which Mandarachala turned. The bearer of discus and mace stood in one form among the gods and in another among the daityas, and pulled the serpent-king with both. In yet another form, vast, which neither the gods nor the daityas could see, Shri Keshava held the mountain down from above. By one tejas of his he put strength into the naga-raja Vasuki, and by another he increased the strength of the gods. The churning went forward on his hands.
The Manifestation of Lakshmi
As gods and danavas churned the ocean of milk, the first to rise was Surabhi, the cow who is the support of every havis offered in yajna, whom the gods themselves worship, and the gods and the danavas were so taken with her that their eyes forgot to blink. Then, while the siddhas in svarga wondered aloud what this was, what this was, the goddess Varuni appeared, her eyes rolling with intoxication. More churning, and up from the ocean came the Parijata, the kalpavriksha whose scent perfumes the three worlds and delights the women of the gods. Then came the apsaras, wonderful to see, endowed with beauty and generosity and every virtue. Then the moon rose, and Mahadeva took it; and the poison that rose out of the ocean of milk the nagas took. Then Bhagavan Dhanvantari himself came up out of the water in white garments, holding a kamandalu full of amrita, and at that sight the daityas and the danavas and the munis with them were at ease and very glad.
After him, seated on a full-blown lotus and holding a lotus in her hand, radiant, Shri Lakshmi rose from the ocean. The great rishis, overjoyed, praised her with the Shri Sukta. Vishvavasu and the gandharvas sang before her; Ghritachi and the apsaras danced. The Ganga and the other rivers came in their own persons to bathe her, and the elephants of the quarters poured pure water over the great goddess of all the worlds from golden pitchers. The ocean of milk took a body and gave her a garland of lotuses that never fade, and Vishvakarma set ornaments on each of her limbs. So, in divine garland and garments, bathed in divine water and adorned with divine ornaments, before the eyes of all the gods, Shri Lakshmi went and took her seat on the breast of Shri Vishnu.
The gods saw Shri Lakshmi on Hari’s breast and a supreme joy came over them all at once. Viprachitti and the other daityas, whom Lakshmi had abandoned and who had set themselves against Vishnu, were thrown into a frenzy. Those mighty daityas snatched the kamandalu of amrita out of Shri Dhanvantari’s hand. Then Bhagavan Vishnu took the form of a woman, Mohini, and by his maya deluded the danavas, took the kamandalu from them and gave it to the gods. Indra and the gods drank the amrita. The daityas fell on them with sharp swords and every other weapon, and the gods, strong now with the amrita in them, struck them and cut them down, until the whole daitya army fled in every direction and some of it went down to patala. The gods bowed to the bearer of conch, discus and mace with joy and ruled svarga as before. From that day the radiant sun went on his path again and the stars on theirs, Bhagavan Agni blazed up bright, every being turned to dharma, the three worlds were full of Shri once more, and Indra, best of the gods, was prosperous again.
The Boon of Lakshmi
Indra went up to svarga, took back the kingdom of the gods, and from his throne he praised the lotus-handed Shri Lakshmi. “You are the mother of all the worlds, lotus-eyed, resting on Vishnu’s breast, and I bow to you. You dwell in the lotus, you hold the lotus, your face is a lotus, and you are the beloved of Padmanabha. You are Siddhi, you are Svadha and Svaha and Sudha, the purifier of the worlds; you are Sandhya and Ratri, Prabha and Vibhuti, Medha and Shraddha and Sarasvati. You are the yajna-vidya and the mahavidya, the guhya-vidya and the atma-vidya that gives liberation; you are anvikshiki and the three Vedas, varta and dandaniti, every knowledge a kingdom runs on, and with your gentle forms and your fierce ones you fill this whole world. Who else could dwell in the yajna-body of Gadadhara? Abandoned by you the three worlds were all but destroyed, and now you have given them life again. Wife, sons, house, wealth, grain and friends come to men from your glance; health, lordship, the fall of enemies and happiness are not hard for the man you look upon. You are the mother of all the worlds, and Hari is their father; by you and by Vishnu this whole world, moving and unmoving, is pervaded. Never forsake our treasury, our cattle-shed, our house, our enjoyments, our body and our wife; never leave our sons, our friends, our animals and our ornaments. Those you leave are soon left by sattva and truth, by purity and character. The man you look on, though he has no virtue, soon gains character and family and wealth; he is praised, he is virtuous and fortunate and well-born, he is called wise and brave and valiant. Beloved of Vishnu, mother of the world, the man you turn your face from finds his character and every other virtue turned at once to faults. Even Brahma’s tongue cannot describe your virtues to the end. Lakshmi, be pleased with me, and never leave me.”
Lakshmi, who dwells in every being, answered him in the hearing of all the gods. “Indra, your stotra has pleased me greatly. Ask the boon you want; I have come here to give you a boon.” Indra asked for two. “If you will give a boon and I am worthy of one, give me this: that you never leave these three worlds. And the second: whoever praises you with this stotra, never leave him.” “I will never leave these three worlds,” Lakshmi said. “Your stotra has pleased me, and that is my boon to you. And whatever man praises me with this stotra morning and evening, I will never turn away from him.”
So, Parashara said, the greatly fortunate Shri Lakshmi, pleased by Indra’s worship in stotra, gave him those boons long ago, and in that story lies the answer to Maitreya’s question. Lakshmi first arose from Bhrigu, by his wife Khyati, and then, at the churning for amrita, she arose from the ocean through the labor of the gods and the danavas. Whenever Shri Vishnu, god of gods and lord of the world, takes an avatara, Lakshmi comes with him. When Shri Hari took the form of Aditya she rose again from the lotus and was called Padma; when he was Parashurama she was Dharani, the earth; when he was Rama she was Sita; and at Krishna’s birth she was Shri Rukmini. In his other avataras too she is never apart from him. When Bhagavan wears a divine form she takes a divine body, and when he is human she appears as a woman; she makes her body to suit Vishnu’s. Whoever hears or reads this story of Lakshmi’s birth, Lakshmi will not leave his house for three generations. In the houses where this stotra of Lakshmi is read, poverty, the root of every quarrel, can never stay. “You asked me how Lakshmi, first Bhrigu’s daughter, arose again from the ocean of milk,” Parashara said, “and I have told you all of it. This stuti of Lakshmi from Indra’s mouth brings every prosperity, and in the homes of those who recite it daily, poverty will never stay.”
Source: the Vishnu Purana (Gita Press, Gorakhpur)