Kubera
குபேரன் कुबेर
Also Vaishravana, Dhanapati, Yaksharaja, Vaisravana.
SmartaVillage and folkBuddhist
Who this is
Kubera is the treasurer of the gods, and the tradition keeps a careful distinction between him and Lakshmi: she is prosperity, which comes and goes and cannot be held, and he is the treasury, which stores and lends and must be accounted for. He is a yaksha and not a deva by birth, king of the yakshas, and he guards the north. He lent Venkateswara the money for his wedding and has not been fully repaid, which is the one transaction in Indian religion with an outstanding balance. He is worshipped at Diwali beside Lakshmi, and the distinction between the two is why both are invoked.
How to recognise them
Short, heavy, pale, seated with one leg folded and the other down, holding a mace and a money bag or a pot, with a mongoose that spits jewels. Deformed in some descriptions, with three legs and eight teeth, which the texts give as the result of a curse. In the Vastu diagram he occupies the north, and a safe or a cash box is placed to face it.
Family and companions
Son of the sage Vishrava, which makes him the half brother of Ravana, who took Lanka and the Pushpaka chariot from him by force. His wife is Bhadra. In the Buddhist tradition he is Vaisravana, one of the four heavenly kings, and in Japan he is Bishamonten, which is the same figure carried east.
How they are worshipped
Dhanteras; Diwali night with Lakshmi; the full moon of Ashwin.
The Kubera yantra is kept in the safe or the puja room facing north. Dhanteras is his with Lakshmi, when metal is bought and the cash box worshipped. The account book is opened facing north. He is asked for the keeping of wealth rather than the getting of it, and the tradition is pointed that asking him for the wrong one is a category error.
The stories
As they are told, with the disagreements left in
The brother who took Lanka
Kubera built or was given Lanka and the flying chariot Pushpaka, and his half brother Ravana, having won boons by austerity, came and took both from him by force. Kubera withdrew north to Alaka in the Himalaya and did not fight for it. When Rama killed Ravana the chariot was returned. The puranas use the episode to set the two brothers against each other as two uses of the same inheritance, and to explain why the treasurer of the gods lives in the mountains and not in the richest city in the world.
Why he is asked only to keep
A householder who prays to Lakshmi is asking for fortune to come. One who prays to Kubera is asking that what has come not leak away, and the texts separate the two offices firmly: Lakshmi is restless by nature and moves on, Kubera is a treasurer and does not generate anything. The practical form of it is that Dhanteras worships both, the metal bought for Lakshmi and the box it is kept in for Kubera, and a merchant who confuses the two is told he has misunderstood his own trade.
Where the regions differ
- Tamil
- Kerala
- Telugu
- Kannada
- North
- Maharashtra
- Bengal
- Punjab
- Assam
- Sri Lanka
- Nepal
- Gujarat
- Odisha
- Mithila
- Kashmir
- Tulu Nadu
- manipur
- rajasthan
- konkani
- sindhi
- jharkhand
- himalayan
- kodava
- North India
- Dhanteras is kept with the buying of metal and the worship of the cash box, and the Kubera yantra is set facing north in the shop.
- Tamil Nadu
- The Kubera Lingam shrines and the Kubera moolai, the north corner of a house, which Vastu keeps clear and where the safe is placed.
- Kerala
- Worshipped with Lakshmi at the opening of a new establishment, and the north east is kept for the household wealth.
- Sri Lanka
- Lanka was his before Ravana took it, which the Ramayana sites on the island still refer to.
Their days
Every one of these has a page of its own
What is said
From the mantra library