Lakshmi

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.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Jessica Frazier 8 episodes
  Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Kent
• Jacqueline Suthren-Hirst No other episodes
  Senior Lecturer in South Asian Studies at the University of Manchester
• Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad 5 episodes
  Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy at Lancaster University

Reading list

• Hindu Myths
  Wendy Doniger (Penguin, 2004) Google Books →
• Hindu Goddesses: Beliefs and Practices
  Lynn Foulston and Stuart Abbott (Sussex Academic Press, 2009) Google Books →
• The Goddesses' Mirror: Visions of the Divine from East and West
  David Kinsley (State University of New York Press, 1988) Google Books →
• The Goddess Lakshmi in South Indian Vaishnavism
  Pratap Kumar (Oxford University Press, 2000)
• Vicissitudes of the Goddess: Reconstructions of the Gramadevata in India's Religious Traditions
  Sree Padma (Oxford University Press, 2013) Google Books →
• Lakshmi: The Goddess of Wealth and Fortune: An Introduction
  Devdutt Pattanaik (Vakils Feffer & Simons, 2002) Google Books →
• Invoking Lakshmi: The Goddess of Wealth in Song and Ceremony
  Constantina Rhodes (State University of New York Press, 2010) Google Books →
• Devi: Goddesses of India
  John Stratton Hawley and Donna Marie Wulff (University of California Press, 1996) Google Books →

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Programme ID: b07wtggv

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07wtggv

Auto-category: 294.5 (Hinduism)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. Lakshmi is one of the most prominent and popular Hindu goddesses.