ଶ୍ରୀ ମହାଲକ୍ଷ୍ମୀ କଵଚମ୍

An armour of Mahalakshmi from the Brahma Purana, taught to Indra by Brihaspati — and the request Indra makes is worth noting for what it asks first. Of all armours this is the most brilliant and the best; tell me truly, lord of speech, what gives protection of the self and health. Not wealth: protection and health. The viniyoga gives Brahma as the sage, gayatri as the metre and Mahalakshmi as the deity, and the armour proper then sets her names over the body part by part in the usual way of the form. It is short by the standards of the kavachas in this collection, fourteen verses in all, and it belongs to the plainer Puranic stratum rather than to the tantric one where most of the Lakshmi armours here sit.