Jyeshtha, the Goddess of Ill Fortune, Accompanied by Her Children

As the purveyor of disease and poverty, Jyeshtha embodies all that is inauspicious, and she is worshipped to prevent such calamities. Here, she is enthroned, holding a blue lotus (nilotpala) and flanked by her crow-headed standard (dhvaja). Seated alongside her in royal ease are her daughter and bull-headed son, who carries a club. Jyeshtha was widely worshipped in the first millennium in southern India by devotees fearful of infant diseases, and her veneration is still associated with the prevention of smallpox. She first appeared in northern India in the fourth century but was gradually absorbed into other cults. A major cult developed in the south, witnessed by her depiction at the early eighth-century Pallava-period Kailashanatha temple in Kanchipuram. Her cult appears to have waned in the post-medieval era.