Jyeshtha (Alakshmi)

The elder sister of Lakshmi, misfortune as a goddess. The Shri Sukta (v.8) asks Shri to drive away her elder sister, marked by hunger and thirst. The Linga Purana (II.6) has Vishnu make her first, before Padma, so that she is the elder; she marries the sage Dussaha, runs from every place where Vishnu or Shiva is named, and is told by Markandeya which houses she may enter (quarrel, dirt, meanness) and which she may not. The Odia Kartika Mahatmya, after the Padma Purana, makes her Varuna's daughter born of the mud left at the deluge, married to Uddalaka and left in the forest, then given houses of her own nature by Vishnu and a Saturday worship under the pipal. In Tamil country she is Mudevi, crow-bannered, broom in hand, worshipped in the 7th-8th centuries and mocked by an Alvar.