Legend · 3 tellings · East India, Pan-India, South India
The elder sister: Jyeshtha, Alakshmi, the one who rose first
Before Lakshmi there was her elder sister: misfortune, who rose first from the ocean, cannot bear a chant or a clean floor, and is told by the gods which houses are hers.
Vishnu makes two sets: brahmins, the Veda, virtue and Padma on one side; Jyeshtha, men outside the Veda and sin on the other. Alakshmi is made first and so is the elder.
She rises after the poison and before the nectar; Padma comes later and becomes Vishnu's wife.
The sage Dussaha marries Jyeshtha, finding her steady; on their travels she flees every chant of Vishnu's or Shiva's name, every wisp of sacrificial smoke, everyone smeared with ash.
He goes to the forest to do penance; she will not; she roams from house to house. Markandeya appears and Dussaha asks where he can live with such a wife.
Markandeya names her Akirti, Alakshmi, Atula, Jyeshtha, and lists the houses she must not enter (where the names are said, the fire kept, the guest fed) and the houses that are hers (where husband and wife quarrel, where no one is honoured, the dirty, the mean, the gamblers).
He tells Dussaha to keep her out of the homes of women who worship her with flowers and incense.
Dussaha leaves her at a lakeside hermitage and goes down through a crevasse to find a dwelling below; the text says he is still there.
Alakshmi asks Vishnu, in Lakshmi's presence, how she is to live; he gives her the wealth of those who revile Rudra and Amba, and says women should keep her content with offerings.
Linga Purana, Uttarabhaga 6: Dussaha and Markandeya
Pan-IndiaShaiva
Suta tells the sages how Jyeshtha came from Vishnu: he made two sets of things, the Veda's side with Padma and the other side with Jyeshtha, and made Alakshmi first, so she is the elder; she rose after the poison and before the nectar, and Padma later became Vishnu's wife. The sage Dussaha married Jyeshtha, but wherever they went she ran from the names of Vishnu and Shiva, from Vedic chanting, from the smoke of a sacrifice and from anyone wearing ash. He wanted to do penance; she would not, and roamed from house to house. Markandeya came, and Dussaha asked where he could live with her. Markandeya gave her four names and two lists: the homes she must never enter, where the names are chanted, the fire fed, the linga worshipped, the guest and the cow and the teacher honoured; and the homes that are hers, where husband and wife quarrel, where nobody is honoured, where food is eaten without feeding the children, the merciless, the lazy, the unclean, the drunkards and gamblers, the house of a wandering wife, the ground under thorny trees. He told Dussaha to keep her away from the homes of women who worship her with flowers and incense. Dussaha left her by a lake and went down through a crevasse into the netherworld, where the text says he remains. Alakshmi went to Vishnu, with Lakshmi beside him, and asked how she was to live; he gave her the wealth of those who revile Rudra and Amba, said that he and Brahma exist by Rudra's grace, and told his devotees and the women of the house to keep her content with offerings.
Odia Kartika Mahatmya (Mahadeva Dasa), after the Padma Purana: Uddalaka and the pipal
East India · OdishaVaishnava
In the eighteenth-century Odia Kartika Mahatmya, which retells the Padma Purana, Alakshmi is born of the mud left over at the deluge and becomes Varuna's daughter. Lakshmi rises at the churning and marries Vishnu before her elder sister, against custom, and Varuna can find no suitor for the elder. Vishnu chooses the sage Uddalaka for her and calls her the worthiest of brides; gods and sages come to the wedding. At his hermitage she cannot bear the chanting and the calm and says she can live only where there is violence, quarrel, theft and spite; Uddalaka leaves her in the forest, saying he will fetch food, and does not return. Her weeping reaches Vaikuntha; Lakshmi asks Vishnu to help; Vishnu offers her a home in Vaikuntha and she refuses, saying its purity would choke her and she would envy her sister. So Vishnu gives her houses of her own nature, the quarrelsome, the cheats, those who enjoy another's pain, those who insult women, the gamblers, the unclean, and declares that every Saturday she will be worshipped beside him under the pipal, which is his own form. Narada, asked to compare the sisters, says it is beautiful when Alakshmi leaves a house and beautiful when Lakshmi enters it.
What is different here:
Varuna's daughter, born of the mud of the deluge, not made by Vishnu; Uddalaka, not Dussaha; Lakshmi pleads for her; a home refused, not a husband lost; the Saturday worship under the pipal; Narada's line.
South India · Tamil Nadu; Bengal for the Diwali eveAll traditions
In the Kamba Ramayana she rises at the churning before Lakshmi and the three gods send her to live where things are inauspicious; because she came first she is Lakshmi's elder, Mudevi. Tamil images show her dark or red, big-bellied, with a crow on her banner and sometimes a broom beside her, a donkey for a mount; her worship peaked in the seventh and eighth centuries (the earliest inscription is in the caves at Tiruparankunram near Madurai) and faded by the tenth, and an Alvar mocked those who kept it. The Shri Sukta's eighth verse asks Shri to drive away her elder sister, the one marked by hunger and thirst. In the north a lemon and chillies hang at the door for her while the sweets inside are Lakshmi's; in Bengal the eve of Diwali is called Alakshmi Viday, the sending away of Alakshmi.
What is different here:
No husband and no Markandeya; the Trimurti together send her away; iconography and custom rather than a plot.
Sources: The Linga Purana, tr. J. L. Shastri (1951), Section 2 chapter 6, The origin and activities of Alakshmi (wisdomlib); B. N. Patnaik, 'The story of Alakshmi' (the Odia Kartika Mahatmya of Mahadeva Dasa after the Padma Purana), saralamahabharata.org, 2013; Wikipedia: Jyestha (goddess); Wikipedia: Alakshmi; wisdomlib definitions of Alakshmi and Jyeshtha; Sri Suktam with verse-by-verse meaning (shlokam.org); Wikipedia: Lakshmi Puja; Lakshmi; Hindu Blog: Goddess Jyestha, Hindu goddess of misfortune (2018)