The Goddess as Iconoclast: Social Hierarchies in Balaram Das’s Lakshmi Purana

The Goddess as Iconoclast: Social Hierarchies in Balaram Das’s Lakshmi Purana
Pravamayee Samantaray

Abstract

The Lakshmi Purana is an Odia devotional text of the 15th century written by Balaram Das, one of the Panchasakha poets of medieval Odisha. Despite outwardly being a Purana, it goes far beyond ritual devotion-it is a revolutionary work that rethinks divinity as a force for social justice. The study’s primary goal is to investigate how Goddess Lakshmi redefines the moral and spiritual landscape of medieval Odia culture by challenging established gender, caste, and ritual authority structures through her moral and iconoclastic deeds. Lakshmi exemplifies an indigenous feminist and anti-caste consciousness that foreshadows later discussions on social reform by refusing to bless Jagannath’s temple unless equality is accepted and by sanctifying Sriya Chandaluni, a marginalised, low-caste devotee. Balaram Das’s use of symbolic inversion, household rituals, vernacular
language, and story structure to democratise spiritual authority and acts of turning ordinary performances of devotion into platforms for ethical assertion is further examined in this article.