One particular goddess now began to emerge as the first clearly identifiable female deity to appear in Indian art. She is habitually described as the goddess Lakshmi but it would be more accurate to describe her as the rice-providing deity Shri, who has claims to be a genuinely Vedic divinity, rising out of the first churning of the milk-ocean as radiant light to make her mark in the Atharva-Veda. She is always shown being lustrated by two elephants while seated or standing on a lotus, which the Buddhists first sought to claim for themselves as the symbol of Buddhist dharma, so her first
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