Celebration in Hindu Society
Hindus worship Lakshmi the most on Diwali, the festival of lights. According to tradition, people would put small oil lamps outside their homes on Diwali in hopes Lakshmi will come to bless them.
The prefix Sri (also spelled Shri, pronounced as shree) translates as "one who takes delight in". Therefore, Sri Lakshmi, means wealth of any kind. Any thing that need be affluent gets the auspicious prefix or suffix Lakshmi, or Sri, such as Rajya Lakshmi (Wealth of Empire), Shanti Sri (Wealth of Peace), etc. In modern India, common titles standing in for the English Mr. and Mrs. are Shri (also Sri or Shree) and Shrimati (also Srimati or Shreemati), as in Sri desai or Srimati shanti.
In Uttarakhand, after the worship of the goddess on Diwali night, the shankha, or conch, is not blown. This is because the shankha is also from the ocean like the goddess herself, so it is given a day of rest.
Karaveera Nivasini Mahalakshmi, also known as Ambabai, is the patron goddess of Kolhapur city, Maharashtra.
Read more about this topic: Lakshmi
Famous quotes containing the words celebration and/or society:
“No annual training or muster of soldiery, no celebration with its scarfs and banners, could import into the town a hundredth part of the annual splendor of our October. We have only to set the trees, or let them stand, and Nature will find the colored drapery,—flags of all her nations, some of whose private signals hardly the botanist can read,—while we walk under the triumphal arches of the elms.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Solitude is impractical, and society fatal. We must keep our head in the one and our hands in the other. The conditions are met, if we keep our independence, yet do not lose our sympathy.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)