Lakṣmī + Kubera — the wealth-pair

Lakshmi and Kubera — the pair of wealth

Two deities, one evening

Lakshmi and Kubera are the paired deities of Dhanteras — Krishna Trayodashi, the thirteenth day of the dark fortnight of Kartik, two days before Diwali in the Kartik month. They are not a canonical "pair" in a temple; they are the two powers a household invokes together on the evening that marks the start of the festival year and, in many reckonings, the beginning of a business or a household's accounts. Lakshmi is the goddess of fortune, prosperity, and the well-kept house; Kubera is the god of wealth and treasure, and in the older classical tradition the kubera-dhana, his hoard, is a real and particular thing. The pairing is practical: she gives the fortune that is not sought, he guards and grows the store that is. Most households keep a small picture or image of both, and set out the things they are grateful for.

The Dhanteras observance is primarily a household and business rite rather than a pilgrimage. There is no shrine to visit for Dhanteras in the sense there is a shrine for Diwali; the rite is done at home and in the shop. On the evening of Dhanteras the house or shop is cleaned and the place of business is swept, new metal or earthen cooking vessels are bought and put on display, a lamp is lit and kept burning through the night, and the day's purchases are shown. In commercial families the Dhanteras khata — a new ledger or account book — is bought and a first entry made in it, which is the point at which the year's accounting is opened. Grain and sweets are set out, and Lakshmi is understood to visit the house that is clean and lit. Where Kubera is honoured, his image or his yantra is placed with hers, and the household asks for the store to be kept from loss.

The etymology is instructive and should be given accurately: dhana is wealth and teras is the thirteenth. It is a day of the new month of the festival calendar, and the association of the wealth deities with the year's fresh beginning is why the day is treated as a threshold. In some parts of India the day is also a day for the purchase of metal, and for giving to the poor, since wealth held is wealth to be used. The Chaturthi that follows Diwali is sometimes called Yag Dhanteras in some regions, and the regional variations of the Dhanteras rite — the Maha Lakshmi fast, the Maharashtrian form — are numerous and should be given from the region rather than from a single national account.

It is worth saying plainly that this is a domestic cult in the strong sense. The Dhanteras observance is not administered by a temple authority, and it reaches the population through the household and the shop rather than through an institution. It is also strongly present in the commercial diaspora — Gujarati, Marwari, Sindhi, and South Indian business communities — and the khata and the ganesh opening of the accounts are the form it takes there.

Sources and what is still unverified

This entry is grounded in the Arthashastra and the Kubera tradition for the classical account, on the Dhanteras-Diwali observance literature, and on the kund and mantra practice of the household rites. A human guardian from a Vaishnava or kula tradition, and specifically from a Dhanteras-observing community, should supply and check: the regional forms of the Dhanteras rite, since the practice varies a great deal between Gujarat, Maharashtra, the north and the south; the correct mantra and the yantra of Kubera as used in a given household; and the place of the Dhanteras khata and the Ganapati day in contemporary business practice. The Marathi Maha Lakshmi fast is a distinct observance and should be given from a Maharashtrian source if it is described. No single canonical pairing of Lakshmi and Kubera in the Purāṇas is asserted here beyond their individual identities, and the "every Hindu home" phrasing in earlier drafts of this entry has been dropped as an overgeneralisation.