Festival story · 2 tellings · East India, South India
The woman Lakshmi visited: Charumati's dream and Shriya the Chandaluni
Lakshmi comes to one woman's house. In the south she comes in a dream to Charumati and names a Friday; in Puri she walks into the clean hut of Shriya the outcaste, is shut out of the temple for it, and lets the two brothers go hungry until they eat from that hut.
Charumati of Kundina serves her husband and his parents and keeps her house; Lakshmi comes to her in a dream and tells her to worship her on the Friday before the full moon of Shravana.
Charumati tells her husband and the women of the town; they fill a pot with rice, dress it with mango leaves and a coconut, tie a turmeric thread round its neck, and keep the vow together.
The thread is cut and a piece tied on each woman's right wrist; their houses fill, and the women thank Charumati.
In Puri Lakshmi goes out on her day and finds the rich ignoring it; disguised as a brahmin woman she teaches a trader's wife; outside the town she finds Shriya the outcaste keeping her house clean and worshipping her.
She enters Shriya's hut and blesses her; at the temple Jagannath, at Balabhadra's urging, refuses her entry for having gone into an outcaste's house.
She refuses the purification, takes off her jewels but keeps her marriage marks, and leaves with a curse: twelve years of hunger and thirst, to end only when they eat food cooked by the woman they called low.
The brothers wander as brahmin beggars; the food blows out of their hands; people drive them off saying Lakshmi has left them.
Starving, they come to a palace, are told it belongs to an outcaste woman, agree to eat, are served as in the temple, and know her.
Balabhadra tells Jagannath to ask her back; she sets her terms, that she may visit any devotee she likes and that the temple's food be shared without regard to caste, and returns.
South India · Andhra, Telangana, Karnataka, Tamil NaduAll traditions🪔 Varalakshmi Vratam
The vrata books begin with Parvati asking Shiva which vow a woman should keep for the good of her house, and Shiva naming the Varalakshmi vow and telling of the woman who first kept it. In the city of Kundina (the Telugu katha sets it in Magadha, with golden walls) lived Charumati, who served her husband and his parents and kept her house and her temper. Lakshmi, pleased, came to her in a dream and told her to worship her on the Friday before the full moon of Shravana. Charumati told her husband and then the women of the town, and on the day they bathed, cleaned the house, set a pot of rice on a tray, dressed it with mango leaves and a coconut marked with turmeric, tied a turmeric thread round its neck, and worshipped the goddess in it with flowers, lamps, songs and sweets. Then the thread was cut and a piece tied on each woman's right wrist. Their houses filled, and the women thanked Charumati for the dream she had shared. The books add that the vow is kept by married women in Andhra, Telangana, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, and that at Tiruchanur the goddess is dressed as Varalakshmi on the day.
Lakshmi Purana of Balarama Dasa (Odisha): Shriya the Chandaluni
East India · Puri, OdishaVaishnava
Balarama Dasa's Odia poem has Lakshmi leave her shrine in the Puri temple on her own day and find the rich of the town ignoring it. Dressed as a brahmin woman she teaches a trader's wife how to keep it; outside the town she finds Shriya, a poor outcaste woman, keeping her house clean and worshipping her with everything she has, and she goes in and blesses her. When she comes back Jagannath, at Balabhadra's urging, will not let her in: she has been inside an outcaste's house. She will not take the purification. She takes off her jewels but keeps the marks of her marriage, and goes, and as she goes she leaves them a curse: twelve years of hunger and thirst, to end only when they eat food cooked by the woman they called low. The brothers go out as brahmin beggars from house to house; what is put into their hands blows away, and people drive them off saying Lakshmi has left them. At last, starving, they come to a palace and are told it belongs to an outcaste woman; they say they will eat anything; they are served exactly as they were served in the temple, and they know her. Balabhadra tells Jagannath to ask her to come back. She sets two conditions: she may visit any devotee she likes, and the temple's food is to be eaten by everyone together, brahmin and chandala alike. He agrees, and she returns. The poem is read on the Thursdays of Margashira, when Odia women draw her footprints in rice paste and measure out the new paddy in the mana.
What is different here:
Not a dream but a visit in person, and to the poorest house; the goddess is punished for it and punishes in return; the vow that grows from it is a Thursday, not a Friday.
Sources: Wikipedia: Varalakshmi Vratam; Hindu Blog: Varalakshmi Vratham, nombu rules and home puja (2019); Science Divine: Varalakshmi vrat katha and puja vidhi; Abhibus blog: Varalaxmi Vratham; 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