Bhumi Devi, also Bhudevi, and in her older Vedic form Prithvi, is the earth worshipped as a goddess. In the southern Vaishnava tradition she is one of the two consorts of Vishnu, standing on his left where Sridevi (who is Lakshmi, goddess of fortune) stands on his right, so that the Lord is flanked by the goddess of wealth and the goddess of the earth. She is the ground itself made a person: patient, forbearing, endlessly generative, bearing all that lives upon her. Her most famous connection is with the boar avatar of Vishnu, Varaha, who dives into the cosmic ocean to lift her on his tusks after a demon has dragged her beneath the waters, an image, endlessly reproduced in sculpture, of the earth being rescued and restored to her place. She is also a mother in the epic tradition: in the Ramayana, Sita is found in a furrow of a ploughed field and is understood as a daughter of the earth, and at the close of her story she returns into the ground from which she came, the earth-mother opening to receive her. Bhumi Devi represents the sacred and living character of the soil in Hindu thought, honoured before ploughing and building, forbearing of the burdens laid upon her, and understood as a divine person rather than mere matter.