Jyestha Devi – the Goddess who lost her sheen

“Nothing is permanent” – so true for us, the mere mortals. Surprisingly, these vicissitudes – the ups and downs of the life – are part of the lives of the Gods and Goddesses too. They bring changes in the fortunes of the divinities as well.

There are times when people added new divine figures in the pantheon of Gods and Goddesses. Later, these became immensely popular and revered. At the same time, there were some popular deities who did not remain relevant. People stopped worshiping them. This article is about one such Goddess – Jyestha Devi.

Who is Jyestha Devi?

Jyestha-Devi was born during the churning of ocean (samundra-manthan) by Asuras and Devas.

The first product of this churning was Halahal or the Kalkuta poison. It terrified the Gods and the Asuras equally. Lord Shiva consumed this poison to protect the three worlds. After Halahal, Jyestha Devi – the Goddess of misfortune appeared from the sea wearing red garments.

She emerged from the sea before Devi Laxmi and so she is known as Jyestha – the elder sister.

How Jyeshtha Devi gets the name Alaxmi

Jyestha Devi emerged from the sea just after the poison. Therefore she carried the darker attributes, like – poverty, misfortune and strife. Devi Lakshmi was born towards the end of the ocean churning, closer to the appearance of the elixir. Hence she carried the good attributes like luck, money, good fortune. Jyestha Devi represents everything opposite of Laxmi, and thus got another name Alaxmi.

The story of Jyestha Devi’s marriage and title of Ugliest Goddess

Jyestha Devi was ugly. Her appearance repelled everyone, and no-one was ready to associate with her. At that time sage Dussaha came forth and agreed to marry her. However, on their way home, he observed a peculiar habit of her newly married wife. Whenever she heard a hymn in praise of Lord Shiva or Lord Vishnu, she immediately closed her ears.

It was soon evident to the sage that she prefers to remain away from auspicious places and religious people. Unhappy with these peculiarities, the sage abandoned Jyestha Devi. Jyestha Devi became upset on the treatment given to her and complained to Lord Vishnu about it. She told him that in this manner she can’t survive and can’t go anywhere.

Lord Vishnu heard her patiently. He assured her that she is free to dwell in all inauspicious places and she would be worshiped by the housewives. They would offer her the food before eating it themselves. This will ensure that the poverty and the famine does not affect their lives.

She was worshiped to keep herself away from the homes of the worshippers.

Laxmi and Alaxmi

Belief also goes that Devi Laxmi likes her elder sister Jyestha. Wherever Laxmi goes, she tries to make room for her. Jyestha Devi cannot live in homes where Devi Saraswati resides, and so Devi Laxmi dislikes Devi Saraswati as well. So, the households she visits, she tries to kick Devi Saraswati out.

As soon as she throws Devi Saraswati out, Devi Laxmi invites Alaxmi to stay in the household. This suits Devi Laxmi as she is restless (chanchala) by nature. As soon as Jyestha Devi becomes comfortable in the household, Devi Laxmi moves out, leaving the household for her sister. So people must worship Lord Vishnu along with Devi Lakshmi.

How worshiping Lord Vishnu helps? Lord Vishnu secretly hid Devi Saraswati on His tongue. Thus with Lord Vishnu’s presence and blessings, one can keep Jyestha Devi away and keep Devi Laxmi forever.

However, this story has a deeper meaning. When one gets power and prosperity (attributes of Lakshmi), more than often the person becomes proud of self. He discards common sense, knowledge and logic, the attributes of Devi Saraswati. Gradually, the he falls in the clutches of Alakshmi, with a decline in peace and prosperity.

The Cult of Jyestha Devi

Her followers think that Jyestha Devi was unfairly demonized. She is nothing but an epitome of selflessness. She was born ugly as she brought along and carried unselfishly, all the bad things hidden in the ocean. This is the reason that only after her emergence, the churning of ocean revealed the good things.

They believe that Jyestha Devi may look uncouth in her appearance and viewed with contempt, but she will finally command respect. They believe, only she can lead to a path of prosperity and spiritual liberation.

She ensures that people engaging in evil acts will have misfortunes, misery and will perish ignominiously. Once people engaged with these wrong paths realize their follies and surrender to her – She shows them the path to reach her younger sister Laxmi – Goddess of abundant prosperity and mental bliss.

The devotees believe that she was married to Kapil Muni and thus they call her – Kapilapatni. To be honest, the story of sage Dussaha sounds like a later addition. Even the name chosen for the saint reflects a negative bias for him.

The Symbolism behind emergence of poison from Samudra-Manthan

I feel that the ocean-churning episode signifies what when someone goes for a mammoth task. At first it looks like a mountain and all the troubles appear too many, even the results are disheartening. However, as one pursues the task ignoring the troubles and bad results, the auspicious and good things start to appear.

Past Popularity of Jyestha Devi

The worship of Jyestha Devi is from ancient times. Worship of Jyeshta was in vogue in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka between 7th and 10th Century. Later on, she lost glory and was abandoned.

Jyestha Devi in ancient Sculptures

Pandyan cave architecture in Southern Tamil Nadu and the Pallava sculptures of Northern Tamil Nadu have plenty of sculptural representation of Jyestha Devi.

In the Pandyan Cave temples, she accompanied the sculptures of Lord Ganesha and Saptamatrikas. In-fact, the three most important deities of the ancient times (5th – 9th century) were Sri, Durga and Jyestha Devi. Out of these three, the first two are still very popular.

There is an inscription from eighth century, at Thiruparankundram. It states that a minister of the Pandyan King constructed a cave temple for Jyestha Devi near Devi Durga’s temple. The mention of an exclusive cave shrine for the Goddess Jyestha signifies her importance in the period.

During the Chola period, Jyestha Devi became part of the eight important deities. These were – Ganesha, Subramanya, Chandra, Surya, Chandesa, Bhairava, and Saptamatrikas and Jyestha. And her shrines were exempted from taxes, like the shrines of Pidari.

In ancient times, people sculpted Lord Ganesha and Jyestha Devi, on the façade flanking the doorways of the temple. They believed this will ward off the evil spirits and bless the devotees with fortunes.

They even found an abandoned sculpture of Jyeshtha Devi from Chola period along the outer wall of Oppilla Ambikai-Anandeeswarar Temple at Adanjur in Thanjavur as recently as in 2020. 

Jyestha Devi in ancient scriptures

We find an entire chapter devoted to the worship of this Goddess in Bodhayana Grihya Sutram (a group of Vedic Sanskrit texts which cover dharma, daily rituals, mathematics. It belongs to the Krishna Yajurveda school, compiled in the 8th to 6th centuries BCE). This tells us about her importance in ancient times.

The Agamas  such as the Amshumadbhedagama, the Suprabhedagama, the Purvakarangama and the Vishnudharmottara Purana elaborates on the iconography of Jyestha Devi. Vishnudharmottara Purana is supplement to Vishnu Purana and has three parts; the third part or the khand is about the origin of image making and interdependence of arts. There is mention of iconography of Jyestha Devi. It instructs about sculpting Jyestha Devi in two forms- Raktha Jyestha and the Neel-Jyestha.

The famous Vaishnava alvar saint – Thondaradippodi, in one of his Tamil verse complained that people foolishly waste their time in worshiping Jyestha Devi, ignoring the supreme God Vishnu, who in-fact is the giver of all gifts. From this verse, we can easily understand that during his time, there was a cult with a huge following, worshipping Jyestha Devi. This cult considered Her supreme to all.

Gradual decline of Jyestha Devi

However, the importance of the Goddess gradually decreased, and her worship almost stopped by the eleventh century. Afterwards, her idols were removed from their original place and were thrown in some corner of the temple compound. At some places, archaeologists even found the burned idols of the Goddess.

Even when the idols remained in their original place, people stopped worshiping her. This phenomenon happened both in North India and South India. The Goddess was completely forgotten with time. Today we mostly come across her idols in the museums only.

Reading beyond the obvious in the story of Jyestha Devi

Disclaimer: The paragraphs under this head are solely my interpretation. I have not read anything anywhere about it and hence can be totally baseless, my figment of imagination.

Reading about the story of Jyestha Devi and her getting a boon from Lord Vishnu about dwelling at inauspicious places and co-relating it with Alvar saint Thondaradippodi‘s verse, I wonder is it possible that there was a strong opposition among the cult followers of Lord Shiva, Lord Vishnu and Jyestha Devi. So much so, that they consider their deities the Supreme and the other ones as the lesser Gods.

Slowly and Slowly, the cult following Jyestha Devi lost it’s say and the followers. Then the winning cults pushed the Goddess, terming her as the Goddess of inauspicious things. The hatred was so strong that even her existing statues from the temples were removed and thrown out of the temples and the villages as well.

I wonder, why else, the alvar saint complains about the followers of Jyestha Devi not worshipping Lord Vishnu? As per the current mythological story about her written above, Lord Vishnu blessed her to dwell in inauspicious places. It clearly shows Lord Vishnu’s higher position than Jyestha Devi’s. I think that her followers about whom alvar saint complained, did not think so.

Indian Gods and Goddesses who lost popularity and glory

Was Jyestha Devi the only one who went through this downtrend in fame and fortune? The answer is No. We notice that similar things happened with the idols of the Varaha and the Narasimha avatars of Lord Vishnu. Earlier all the temples had their figures. And interestingly, according to agamas, even in Shiva temples, the idols of Lord Narasimha were a must towards the west of the central shrine.

We notice that separate temples were constructed for Narasimha and Varaha avatar during the reigns of the Chalukyas of Badami, and the Pallavas of Kanchi.

Slowly and slowly worshiping these avatars stopped. Though Lord Narasimha is still popular because of Holi festival’s association with Him. But there is a strong belief now that if one does not worship Narsimha idol properly, it can cause damage. Saying is that if furious, due to the negligence in the worship, Lord Narasimha can even burn down villages.

Similarly, we read during the Lingodbhava episode that as Lord Brahma spoke a lie, Lord Shiva cut his fifth head. He further cursed Brahma that no one will worship Brahma anymore.

Also, we know about the intense one-upmanship stories between Lord Shiva’s Sarabhesa and Lord Vishnu’s Narasimha avatar. What I can think of is that it was common for one cult follower to demean others. If it can happen among the powerful Vaishnava and Shaiva cults, the same might have happened with the cult followers of Jyestha Devi and Lord Brahma. They were eventually treated as lesser Gods as their followers reduced.

Iconography of Jyestha Devi

Jyestha Devi sculptures have two hands, big cheeks, pendulous breasts – sometimes descending as far as naval. She has flabby naval, thick thighs, raised nose, hanging lower lips and color as dark as ink. She seats comfortably on a throne with both her feet touching ground.

Her idols are naked above waist. She carries a tilaka mark over her forehead, signifying her married status, and her hairs are in vasikabandha style. She holds a nilotpala flower in her left hand and her right hand is holding a water-pot. Sometimes, right hand is in Abhaya-pose blessing the devotees or simply rests on the seat.

The carvings of Jyestha Devi have a crow-banner on her right, and a broomstick towards her left. She rides Donkey. Crow represents the inauspicious as it flocks in cemetery to take a seat on dead or the corpse. Here, the broom symbolizes Jyestha Devi sweeping bad omen away from or into a house (depending on whether one is worshiping or not worshiping her).

The contrarian belief is that broom represented cleanliness and wealth. These people believe that Jyestha Devi was in reality a Goddess for agriculture-fertility, yield and growth.

Belief also goes that Jyestha Devi reveled in blood. Goblins, demons and spirits were her followers. Another reason, I can think behind her becoming unpopular could be Her association with Tantric cult.

Later sculptures of Jyestha Devi

Jyestha Devi’s initial sculptures were single. Later, when she became part of the ashta-parivar, the idols had large figure of Jyestha Devi in the middle and a Nandi Faced son on Right hand side and a good looking daughter towards her left.

Maanthan/Kuligan is her son and Mantha or Agni Matha is her daughter.. The Son holds a staff is his right hand and a rope in his left hand or points a finger in Suchi Mudra. His Right leg hangs down and the left leg rests on the seat. He wears kirita mukuta on his head and drapes of silk garments.

Some people believe that Jyestha-Devi was in-fact the wife of Shanideva. The story goes that Ravana wanted to have an immortal son. In order to achieve the same, he captured seven planets and asked them all to stay in 11th place. Shanideva on Shukracharya’s advice created Manthan outside 11th place. It was his presence outside 11th house that caused the death of Ravana’s son – Indrajeet/Meghnatha.

Jyestha Devi’s daughter Mantha is often shown in seated position; However, her carvings in the standing position are not uncommon as well. She bears a youthful appearance. She wears red clothes and ornaments and has Karanda-mukuta or a conical crown on her head. Her left leg hangs down and the right leg is folded, resting on the seat.

Other names of Jyestha Devi

Jyestha Devi is also known by the names of Alaxmi (as we discussed earlier), MooDevi, Dhumavati, Sheetla Maata etc. Probably Moodevi was the simplification of tongue twister word Mooththadevi (Mooththa in Tamil meaning elder sister). In today’s context, it is an insult to call anyone Moodevi; it means lazy, dumb or a total moron.

Belief goes that Shitala Mata, the Goddess of Smallpox – worshipped in some part of India is no-one else but Jyestha Devi.

In Udaipur, after Holi, people celebrate Basoda on Sheetala Ashtami. According to Basoda custom, families don’t cook on the day. Most of the families cook one day before and consume stale food on Sheetala Ashtami. Goddess Sheetala controls smallpox, chickenpox, measles, etc. and people worship her to ward off any outbreak of these diseases.

I visited a few Sheetala Mata Mandir in Udaipur. In those temples I did not see any idol. However, the picture at the entrance of the temple carried her picture that has attributes same as Jyestha Devi.

The central shrine in these temples have the stones as idols without any form. However, these unformed stones do have holes to represent the spots left after the diseases mentioned above.

References

• South-Indian images of Gods and Goddesses – Book by H. Krishna Sastri
• Seven Secrets of the Goddess by Devdutt Pattanaik
• Jyestha cult – An Overview by Dr P.D Balaji
• Elements of Hindu Iconography, By T. A. Gopinatha Rao