What is "nirrti"

निरृति is the goddess of poverty and corruption, one of the dikpāla ( Guardians of the directions), representing the southwest (or—according to Monier-Williams’s Sanskrit-English Dictionary—the south). The name has the meaning of "absence of ṛta, lawless". The masculine form of the name, , is a name of Adharma.

Nirṛti is mentioned in a few hymns of the Rigveda, mostly to seek protection from her or imploring for her departure. In one hymn (X.59), she is mentioned several times. This hymn, after summing up her nature, also asks for her departure from the sacrificial site. In the Atharva Veda (V.7.9), she is described as having golden locks. In the Taittiriya Brahmana (I.6.1.4), Nirṛti is described as dark, dressed in dark clothes and her sacrificial shares are dark husks. In the Shatapatha Brahmana (X.1.2.9), she is associated with pain and as the southwest quarter is her region, pain is associated with the southwest. But elsewhere in the same text (V.2.3.3.) she is mentioned as living in the south, the direction of the kingdom of the dead.