Dhanteras

Dhanteras is the day Diwali begins, and the day it goes shopping. The name is dhan, wealth, and teras, the thirteenth, and on the thirteenth of the dark fortnight before the new moon of Kartika the jewellers and utensil shops of India have the day they wait for all year. Behind the shopping stand three gods: Lakshmi, who comes at dusk to a clean house; Dhanvantari, the physician who rose from the sea with a pot in his hands; and Yama, who is given one lamp at the door and asked to pass by.

The oldest reason is the lamp. The Skanda Purana says that on the thirteenth of the dark half of Ashvin, in the early part of the night, a lamp is to be set at the entrance of the house facing south, and that whoever does so will not be fetched to Yama's city during the festival of lights, even if an untimely death is written for them. The Purana tells of a king's infant son saved that night; the people tell of King Hima's son, whose bride kept Death out with a heap of gold and a night of songs.

The second reason is the physician. When the gods and asuras churned the ocean of milk, the Bhagavata says, the last thing to rise after Lakshmi was a dark young man in yellow silk carrying a pot full of amrita. He was Dhanvantari, a portion of Vishnu, and he knew the cure for every disease. The festival keeps the thirteenth as his birthday, and the new pot bought for the kitchen is his pot.

The third reason is Lakshmi's own promise, and it comes from no Purana. The katha read at home says she once broke a promise to Vishnu for a field of mustard and sugarcane, served the farmer who owned it for twelve years, and when she left swore to return every year on this night to any house that was clean and had a lamp burning. That is why the house is scrubbed, why the lamp is lit at dusk, and why she is worshipped with Kubera, the treasurer of the gods, beside her.

The day starts with cleaning. Floors are washed, cupboards turned out, the shop and the safe wiped down, because Lakshmi is believed to look at the house before she enters it. Then the family goes to the market. A coin of silver with her image, a gold bangle, a brass or copper pot, a steel thali, in many towns a new broom: something new made of metal comes home, and the belief in the north is that what is bought today multiplies.

In the hour after sunset the puja is laid out. Rangoli is drawn at the door with a line of small footprints walking in, the first diyas of Diwali are set along the step, and Lakshmi and Kubera are worshipped together, with Ganesha first and Dhanvantari in many homes, the new purchase set before them. Trading families in Rajasthan and Gujarat put the account books and the keys of the safe before the goddess. In Maharashtra coriander seed and jaggery are offered; in Kerala and Tamil Nadu the Dhanvantari shrines fill with people asking for health.

After the puja one lamp is carried outside and set facing south for Yama. Many families light thirteen small lamps of wheat flour for him. The lamp for Lakshmi inside is fed through the night, and the next evening the lamps double for Naraka Chaturdashi, and the night after that the whole street is alight.