Mortal · Vaishnava · East India · Puri, Odisha
Shriya the Chandaluni
The poor outcaste woman of Balarama Dasa's Odia Lakshmi Purana who keeps her house clean and worships Lakshmi when the rich ignore her day. Lakshmi enters her house and blesses her, and for that is shut out of the Puri temple by Jagannath at Balabhadra's urging; the brothers go hungry until they eat food cooked in her house. The Thursday worship of Margashira, Manabasa Gurubara, grows out of the story.
Sources: Wikipedia: Lakshmi Purana (Balarama Dasa); B. N. Patnaik, 'On two Lakshmi-centred discourses in Odia', saralamahabharata.org, 2011; Odisha Bytes: Manabasa Gurubara and the Lakshmi Purana; odisha.plus on the same · see Shriya the Chandaluni's web