SAUNDARYA LAHARI
FINALIZED TEXT OF THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY NATARAJA GURU
This file is intended to reproduce as closely as possible the finalized text of the translation of the verses of the Saundarya Lahari by Nataraja Guru.
There are several tentative and incomplete versions of the translation of the verses in SAUNDARYA LAHARI NOTES.
In 1972, the Guru dictated a final version, contained in files SLP6 (up to verse 51, inclusive), SLP7 (up to verse 71, inclusive) and SLP8 (verse 71 to 100) which are collated in SAUNDARYA LAHARI SHORT COMMENTS, which we present here, without the short titles, structural diagrams and brief comments. There is also available a file SAUNDARYA LAHARI VARIANTS, which gives variant readings from different versions of the text, compared.
It seems, however that the present version is probably the one that the Guru preferred.
TRANSLATED TEXT OF THE VERSES
VERSE 1
Shiva, united with Shakti, becomes able to manifest,
If otherwise, this god knows not even how to pulsate,
How then could one of ungained merit be able to bow to, or even praise,
One, such as You, adored even by Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma.
VERSE 2
The fine dust arising from Your lotus feet,
Brahma, gathering up, the worlds creates,
Vishnu incessantly bears them up somehow with his thousand heads,
And Shiva, having shaken it up, accomplishes with it his ash-wearing rite.
VERSE 3
To the uninstructed You are the light-city, inner darkness banishing, mid-ocean placed
To inert ones the mind-expanding ooze of sweetness within blossoms celestial,
While for indigent spirits you become a brood of philosophers' stones
And for those submerged in the ocean of birth and death, the very tusk of Vishnu's boar.
VERSE 4
You alone do not act overtly, by gesture, the promises of refuge or boon
Other arms than Yours can confer protection or boon;
What is more, Your feet, o sole refuge of the worlds of beings,
Are alone expert indeed in yielding boons more than asked for.
VERSE 5
Once Vishnu, having adored You, the mother who bestows blessings on those who worship you,
Taking womanly form, caused agitation even unto the City-Burner.
Eros, too, on worshipping You, with body licked into reality by the glances of Rati,
Even to the minds of great recluses, confusion of values brings.
VERSE 6
O Daughter of the Snowy Peak, just deriving from Your glance askance
Whatsoever grace he could; with flowery bow, bumble-bee bowstring,
And five-flowered dart and springtide for minister; all these as one withal:
Mounting the chariot of the mountain breeze, he victoriously reigns, that God of Love.
VERSE 7
O let Her appear before us, that proud counterpart of the City-Burner
Resounding with waist-belt of jingle bells, recumbent by breasts
Like frontal bulges of a calf elephant, slim of waist, with autumnal full-moon mature face,
Holding aloft bow and arrow, noose and goad!
VERSE 8
Seated on a couch of Shiva-form and having the Supreme Shiva for cushion;
Placed within a mansion wafted round by the perfume of blossoms of Kadamba trees,
Located within a celestial grove on a pearly-gem island in the midst of a nectar ocean,
Some fortunate ones contemplate You as the upsurging billow of mental joy.
VERSE 9
The earth placed in the Muladhara, water in the Manipura,
Fire in the Svadhisthana, air in the heart, with space above;
And amid eyebrows placing the mind, and breaking through the whole Kula path,
You do sport with your lord secretly in the thousand-petaled lotus.
VERSE 10
With streaks of ambrosial essence streaming from between Your twin feet,
Sprinkling blessings over the worlds and again from that point of high intelligible values,
Turning Yourself into a snake form of three coils and a half,
You sleep in the hollow of the Kulakunda, Your proper ground attaining.
VERSE 11
With the four of Shiva and of Shiva-maids five,
And severally the nine of prime nature, with eight and sixteen petals
Three circles and three lines, are thus complete,
The forty-three elements making up Your angular refuge.
VERSE 12
O Daughter of the High Peak, to estimate the equal of Your beauty,
The best among poets, exercising their fancy, somehow created Brahma and others.
Eager Your beauty to see, heavenly damsels mentally attain to
What is hard even for ascetics to attain; the state of union with Shiva.
VERSE 13
A man over-aged, uninteresting to the view, inert in sport;
Falling within the range of Your side-glance, they follow, running in hundreds -
Young women, with hair disheveled, their rounded, shapely breasts by blown-off clothes revealed
Their waistbands bursting and silk garments in disarray.
VERSE 14
Fifty-six for earth; for water fifty-two;
Sixty two for fire; for air fifty-four;
Seventy-two for ether; for mind sixty-four;
Are the rays, even beyond these are Your twin feet.
VERSE 15
Clear as autumnal moonbeams, with matted hair-made diadem,
Attached with crescent and with hands bearing refuge or boon-giving
gesture, rosary made of crystal-clear beads and book:
How could anyone, worshipping You but once,
Not gain in flow of words somehow, the pleasing sweetness of honey, milk and grapes?
VERSE 16
That beauty residing within the minds of superior poets,
Resembling that of a forest of lotuses, when touched by the tender light of dawn:
He who can thus adore You, who are so dear to Brahma as magenta itself;
He, by profound words of most tender erotic content, shall please the same select ones.
VERSE 17
He who can contemplate those word-bearing elements of broken moonstone lustre,
Joined with Vasinis, having an elusively fluid gleam;
He becomes, o Mother, the author of great poetic works,
Adding sweet charm to the lotus face of the Goddess of the Word.
VERSE 18
With shades of Your bodily form enriched by the tenderly sunlit dawn,
And the whole earth submerged within magenta glory;
That man, able to contemplate You thus, wins You over with Urvasi and how many, how many other
Heavenly nymphs having gentle, startled, wild deer eyes.
VERSE 19
O Shiva Consort, making Your face the locus with twin breasts below,
And below still, as the better half of Shiva; meditating on Your erotic aspect,
Without delay he can stir the hearts of women; this is but slight
And at once agitates even Her of the three worlds, when sun and moon form Her twin breasts.
VERSE 20
He who can bring You, as emanating nectar out of Your limbs all around,
Into his heart like a moonstone-made statue,
He can quell the pride of serpents like the King of Birds
And a fever patient cure by his very look of ambrosial streak.
VERSE 21
As lightning-streak-bodied, made of sun, moon and fire,
And as placed even above the six lotuses in a great lotus grove;
Those great ones, as seers of such, Your aspect, free from dross and ignorance
They experience the upsurging billow of ultimate delight.
VERSE 22
O Goddess, You, on this Your servant bestow a kind look:
Thus intending to adore, no sooner one begins saying:
"O Goddess, You"; You grant him that state of identity with You
The same as what Vishnu, Brahma and Indra accomplished by the waving of the lights on their diadems.
VERSE 23
Absorbing the left half of the body of Shiva and unsatisfied in mind still,
The other, I surmise, became absorbed also; therefore,
This Your form, having three eyes and bent by twin breasts,
Wearing crescent bedecked crown, became of magenta glory.
VERSE 24
Brahma creates the world, Vishnu protects, Shiva destroys:
Negating all this and his own body, the lord fades out.
Thus what results: Shiva who has eternity for prefix (Sadashiva)
He blesses, obeying the orders derived from Your instantly vibrating eyebrow-twigs.
VERSE 25
Of the three gods, who are originated from Your three nature modalities,
Their worship of You, o Consort of Shiva, would alone be worship
Offered to Your twin feet; it is indeed thus when they do so,
Standing eternally beside Your gem-decked foot-stool, joining bud-like their hands well above their crowns.
VERSE 26
Brahma regains his pure quintuple nature; Vishnu becomes passionless;
The God of Death destruction meets; the God of Wealth becomes bankrupt;
the great Indra becomes functionless, with half-shut eyes;
In this great doom, he sports, o constant spouse, Your lord alone.
VERSE 27
Incantations, mutterings, ritual acts, hand gestures, gait,
Circumambulations, food offerings, inclination, adoration by lying down
All such enjoyments, as coming within the scope of self-surrender,
And thus synonymous with worship of You, let such be what from me might shine forth.
VERSE 28
Even on partaking of nectar, so potent against fear, old age and death;
They reach their doom, all such gods as Brahma or Indra;
On even swallowing that terrible super-poison, for Shiva, time's function is not operative:
The source here being the power of Your marital string.
VERSE 29
"Remove Brahma's crown from before, and that of him called Vishnu;
You are going to hurt his hard headgear: bypass Indra's crown"
As inclining in front of You, they remain, at that very moment for him on his homecoming,
You are about to rise. Such words of Your retinue, they do ring supreme.
VERSE 30
Out of the rays arising from Your proper body, representing psychic powers such as atomicity,
Attendant on You, o Eternal One, one who contemplates these in terms of oneself:
What wonder for him that all benefits from the three-eyed one should only be worth rejection,
And that the fire of doom should perform for him in turn the light-waving rite.
VERSE 31
By sixty-four know-how factors, each capable of generating its own psychic power;
Transcending the whole world while remaining immobile,
The Lord of Beasts, again, by Your insistence, by that free expertness of Yours,
Caused to be brought down this firm earth for the unified fulfillment of all life purposes.
VERSE 32
Shiva, Parvati, Eros and earth; sun, moon,
God of Love, swan and Indra; Para, Mara and Hari;
With these three sets, with their heart monomarks suffixed,
They adore Your letters, o Mother, by way of naming Your component limbs.
VERSE 33
Eros, source, wealth; this triplet placing first within Your charm
O lone and eternal one, innumerable seekers of great enjoyment
Adore You, telling beads of philosopher's stone, ever sacrificing into the fire of Shiva
By hundreds of streaks of clarified butter oblations from the celestial cow.
VERSE 34
You, who are the body of Shiva, having sun and moon for twin breasts
Yourself, I surmise, o Goddess, as a new sinless self.
Therefore, by mutual complementarity, this relation remains one of common reciprocity
Between You two, participating on equal terms of transcendent bliss.
VERSE 35
The mind You are, the sky, the wind too, also the charioteer of the winds
You are the water, as well as the earth; apart from Your manifest form there is nought else indeed!
You, in order to manifest Your own self, by taking a universal form
Of mental bliss substantial, do assume the role of Shiva-bride, and thus triumphant rule.
VERSE 36
I adore that Shiva ultimate, as placed in Your willing centre, shining with the brilliance
Of millions of suns and moons, whose flanks are illumined by the light of the intelligibles beyond;
Whom, worshipping with devotion, lifted beyond the reach of sun, moon and fire,
In that shining domain above all need, one lives indeed in that bright world of light.
VERSE 37
In Your Vishudhi Chakra, crystal-clear and sky-generating,
I adore Shiva and the Goddess also, with a parity of status with Shiva
By whose combined, streaming, moonbeam-like fluorescence,
With banished inner dross, like a female partridge, the world hereunder shines.
VERSE 38
I adore those twin swans, intent on enjoying the nectar
Of the lotus blooming within the consciousness of certain great ones,
Moving within whose minds as a result of their elaboration, the maturation
Of the eighteen arts takes place freed from dross, their goodness extracted as milk from water.
VERSE 39
O Mother, I praise, placing in Your Svadhisthana the fire of sacrifice
Ever looking upon it as the great fire of doom, and placing there her also called Samaya,
So that when the worlds are burning due to his anger,
Her mercy-moist regard renders to it the cooling touch of early spring.
VERSE 40
As found in certain contemplatives who take full refuge in Your Manipura,
I adore that dark cloud of Yours, as traversed by forceful lightning,
Banishing darkness and shining, bursting into sparks with the varied gem-decked brightness of Indra's bow,
While over the three worlds, agonized by the heat of Shiva-sun, it sheds its showering waters.
VERSE 41
I meditate on Your new self, as placed at Your Muladhara, together with Samaya,
Given to her light-step dance, as also that great bold-step dancer;
Giving expression thereby to all nine aesthetic interests, thus by their joint lordship,
By mercy ordaining the rebirth of the world, they confer on it the renewed status of having both father and mother.
VERSE 42
These sky orbs twelve attained to rubyhood and placed close together
He who can praise thus Your golden crown, o Daughter of the Snowy peak
Would he not have then in his mind the impression of the bow of Indra
When, by reflected glory, a slender crescent is produced by the gems imbedded therein?
VERSE 43
Let the blooming blue-lotus forest growth of Your thick, glossy and lustrous locks
O Shiva Consort, banish the darkness within us
To gain whose natural fragrance those other flowers of the garden of Indra,
As I can guess, take their place within Your tresses.
VERSE 44
May it bless us, the upsurging billow of the beauty of your face
Outflowing into a stream, to resemble Your parted hairline,
With vermilion dust bedecked, keeping apart the strong growth of tresses
As if in bondage held by anti-darkness gangs, to reveal the tender rays of dawn.
VERSE 45
Your face, exuding perfume, as it gently smiles,
Having Your bright teeth for filament, when surrounded by Your natural curls
Like so many revelling, honey-licking bees; each the eye
Of the Eros-Burner, puts to shame the beauty of the lotus.
VERSE 46
I fain would treat Your forehead, shining with radiant beauty,
As a second crescent to that other frail one fixed to Your crown,
So that reversed in position, both as knit one-to-one,
Results the form of a fully-matured moon, emanating soft ambrosial essence.
VERSE 47
O Uma, ever pained in concern for banishing the fear of all creatures,
And thus with eyebrows somewhat arched, with eyes of bee-like beauty below,
I do surmise them as making up the bowstring for this bow
Of the Lord of Love, held by his other hand, his arm and fist hiding the middle part.
VERSE 48
That eye of Yours, in essence the same as the sun and other than the left,
It generates daytime; the left one, presiding over night, creates its three vigils;
While the third eye, like a half-open golden lotus bud,
Ushers in the twilight time, moving between day and night.
VERSE 49
Vishala the expansive, Kalyani the auspicious; Sphutaruchi the clear of taste
Ayodhya the invincible, by blue lotus bound; Kripadharadhara, on mercy's fountain founded;
A certain Madhura, the sweet; Avanti, of saving power; Bhogavatika, enjoyment affording;
All such names of various cities of lasting fame, within Your total regard they do reign triumphant.
VERSE 50
Seeing Your baby bumble-bee-like pair of eyes which, while seeming to cast glances,
Do not give up the bases of Your ears, mellowed by the play of the nine aesthetic interests,
Remaining like aptness with poets, wholly absorbed in drinking the honey within a spray of blooms;
Your mid-forehead lotus-bud eye, by jealousy touched, seems magenta-tinged.
VERSE 51
Moved by sentimental love for Shiva, resentful to any other person;
With anger of jealousy towards Ganges and with transports of wonder at Shiva's story;
With fearful surprise for the snakes of Hara, and for friends a jestful smile;
As such a source of lotus-red grace, Your regard, o Mother, for me will remain one of kindliness.
VERSE 52
Drawn fully to the ear-limits, like gleaming Eros arrows, with lashes looking like
Arrow-base feathers; these Your eyes, having the effect
Of disturbing the complacent detachment of the City-Burner,
Make for Your glory as the highest clan of the Mountain King.
VERSE 53
The tricolour distinctness of Your eyes, o beloved of Ishana (Lord)
Presented in clear threefold relief by the use of collyrium,
Would seem to create afresh the gods Shiva, Vishnu and Indra,
Bereft of passion and having the qualities of Rajas, Sattva and Tamas.
VERSE 54
O one of kindly, sympathetic regard, Your heart being
Given over to the Lord of Beasts: of rivers such as Shona, Ganga and Yamuna,
Coloured red, white and black:
Their sacred waters You do blend indeed into sinless confluence for our purification.
VERSE 55
With eyes open or shut, You can effect, as saints say,
The being or non-being of the world, o Daughter of the Earth-Supporting Lord;
What thus came to be as you opened them, this entire world, without anything left,
To save, I now surmise, You remain now with eyes unwinkingly withdrawn.
VERSE 56
O Aparna, afraid of the gossip carried to Your ear bases by Your lengthened eyes
Surely they lie merged unwinking in water like the female Sapherika fish
This Lakshmi too, leaves behind at dawn the closed petal doors of water lilies,
And at dusk, forcing them open, She re-enters therein.
VERSE 57
With Your long-extended regard having the beauty of water-lilies just opening,
O Shiva-Consort, do bathe with mercy even me steeped in misery far off;
Thus shall I be blessed with no loss to You;
The moonbeams do fall on forest and mansion with equality.
VERSE 58
The two sets of curved limiting lines of Yours, o Daughter of the King of Mountains,
Who is it that will not fancy them as the bow of the flower-arrowed one;
Where, placed obliquely, and reaching beyond the path of hearing,
As it shines, adhering to Your side-glances, it gives the impression of the fixing of the arrow.
VERSE 59
This, Your face, I consider Kama's chariot with four wheels,
As seen when Your ear ornaments are reflected on Your shining cheeks;
Surmounting which that great hero, Kama, assails the Lord of Hosts,
Who, with sun and moon for foothold, mounting the globe for chariot, is fully ready to give him battle.
VERSE 60
The good sayings of Saraswati, exuding nectar sweetness,
Ever absorbing as with slow interest, You bend Your ears to them, o Blessed One
Each bright wit therein approving with nods,
While Your series of earrings seem to applaud them with their high-pitch jinglings.
VERSE 61
O banner of the dynasty of the Himalayas, Your nose ridge, here as Your clan's flagstaff,
Let it ripen for us, standing so near below You, deserving fruit;
Inwardly wearing pearls as they do, and dropped by cool moonbeam respiration,
It bears, even outside, pearls due to the plenitude of the same.
VERSE 62
O one of goodly teeth, of Your parted lips naturally red I shall declare the similitude;
Let the coral reef bear fruit by reflection from its original model
With which desiring to climb to the point of mid-parity,
However could it avoid being abashed at least by a degree?
VERSE 63
Your smile, like a moonbeam cluster out of Your moon-bright face,
Partridges, on drinking, by surfeit of sweetness,
Numbness of tongue they got; thus presently do they imbibe eagerly
The nectar thereof, treating it as sour brew, night by night.
VERSE 64
By incessant repetition of a muttered charm glorifying Your Lord;
As offering the flower-red shade of Your tongue triumphs;
The pure, clear, crystal outline image of Saraswati,
While seated at Your tongue-tip, o Mother, in turn attains to rubyhood in its bodily form.
VERSE 65
O Mother, they merge, those mouthfuls of betel-juice of Your face,
As Skanda, Vishnu and Upendra, returning from vanquishing demons in battle,
Taking off their headgear and armour, they return, discountenancing
That Shiva's portion of offering meant for Chanda which are moon-bright bits of camphor.
VERSE 66
Starting as You do to sing with Your vina, with head movements,
Of the varied exploits of the Lord of Beasts, You, as the Goddess of the Word,
The one of lovely speech, You promptly cover up to silence
Your instrument as mocking the sweetness thereof by sounds of strings.
VERSE 67
Affectionately touched by the tip of the hand of the Mountain King,
And lifted again and again by that Shiva out of desire
To drink of the lips thereof; that which makes the handle
For Your face-mirror, how could we ever speak of it, Your peerless chin.
VERSE 68
Incessantly embraced by the arms of the City-Burner,
And thrilled to thorny bristling of the hair of Your neck,
It shows a lotus-stalk grace, smudged by excess of dark cosmetic paste.
By itself it retains beneath the creeper-tendril suppleness of the pearly necklace lotus core.
VERSE 69
Those three lines on Your neck, o One fully expert in time, syncope and melody,
They are the counter-grounds of Your marital thread of strands and sub-strands,
As they do shine as the ground wherein is born many a melody;
Giving position, regulation and limitation for the three groups of musical keys.
VERSE 70
Of the lotus-core tender beauty of Your fourfold hands,
He sings the praise, the lotus-born god, trembling the while because of Shiva's nails
That once of yore nipped off his extra head, he (Brahma) intending now to pray for
Your refuge-granting hand-gesture for each of his remaining heads.
VERSE 71
Shining by the brilliance of Your fingernails that mock the colour of
Just-opening lotus buds, how could we speak of the beauty of Your hand?
Granted be, o Uma, that the lotus could have one shade less of parity with it,
If at all, and that, alas, only when touched by the magenta paste of the sole of Lakshmi as she plays thereon.
VERSE 72
Let it banish our misery, o Goddess, your twin breasts,
Ever being sucked equally by Skanda and Ganesha;
Of which, seeing their milk-spouting fronts, Ganesha causes laughter
As he feels his own front with misgivings in his mind.
VERSE 73
O banner of the King of Peaks, Your breasts, shoulder-borne,
Are nectar-bearing ruby pots indeed, without any trace of doubt:
These two, Skanda and Ganesha, both innocent of the pleasures of marital contact,
Drinking from them they remain thus child-like to the present day.
VERSE 74
Your mid-bust region, wearing a slender garland of pearly beads,
Derived and worked out by some elephant-demon vanquished by Shiva,
The semblance bears of his reputation with added redness of lips
And an inner brightness presenting a picturesque charm.
VERSE 75
Your breast milk, I consider, o maiden born to the Earth-Supporting Lord,
As if it were word-wisdom's ocean of nectar, flooding from out of Your heart,
Offered by one who is kind, which, on tasting,
This Dravidian child, amidst superior poets, is born a composer of charming verse.
VERSE 76
That mind-born god, once, on his body being engulfed
In the fire of Shiva's ire, into the deep lake of Your navel,
O Mountain Daughter, he dived, and on re-emerging,
The smoke thus raised, the people look upon as Your rows of hair.
VERSE 77
O auspicious Mother, that something revealed at Your slender waist,
Looking like ripples on the surface of the river Kalindi,
Looms in the mind of contemplatives as space reduced to ethereal particles,
Entering into the cavity of Your navel, and produced by the friction of Your pot-like breasts.
VERSE 78
O mountain-born, your navel reigns supreme
As a stilled Gangetic whirlpool; as the fecund flowerbed of Your breast-bud-bearing creeper;
As the sacrificial fire-pit for Kama, and for Rati as her pleasure-bower;
While to the eyes of the Mountain Lord the cavern mouth for his austerities.
VERSE 79
For Your waist, naturally slim, fatigued by weight of bust form,
Bending by form and on the point of breaking,
Equal in state to a tree on a collapsing brook bank,
O mountain-born one, let there be security forever.
VERSE 80
O Goddess, having made Your twin breasts gain the beauty of gold pots,
Rubbing at the upper arms, bursting the bodice and presently perspiring,
The God of Love, now wanting to save your threefold waist from breaking, saying: "Enough!",
With three strands of a wild creeper, he presently binds.
VERSE 81
Ponderability and extensiveness Shiva once bestowed on You as dowry,
Cutting them off from his own hips; thus it is this
Yours here, both weighty and expansive, cancels out the whole world
And by prior substantiality confers lightness on it too.
VERSE 82
Beating both the best of elephant trunks, and groups of golden banana stems,
By thighs and by knees having goodly callosities, due to daily devotions
To Your lord, even the twin frontal knobs of the heavenly elephant
You out-do, o Mountain Daughter triumphant.
VERSE 83
His quiver duplicating as Your twin legs, looking like pillars
Made by the God of Love, for giving battle to Shiva,
They show at their knees ten arrowheads, simulating nails,
Sharpened only on the whetstones which are the crowns of gods.
VERSE 84
Mother, Your twin feet, marking as they do the crest point of wisdom,
Wearable as head ornament by You as by me, kindly place both upon my head
Water for their ablution comes from the stream in Shiva's matted hair
And the red paste on their sole comes from the magenta glory of Vishnu's crown.
VERSE 85
Spoken words of worship do we offer to these Your lotus feet,
Beauteous as they are to view, smeared over with paste of magenta glory
Extremely jealous is he, the Lord of Beasts, of that Ashoka tree
In Your pleasure grove, for desiring to be kicked by them.
VERSE 86
On having inadvertently defaulted in respect of Your family name,
While stooping in shame, Your husband's forehead as You kicked with Your lotus feet,
That enemy of Shiva, wholly giving up his rancour, his victory celebrates with clamour of many jingle bells.
VERSE 87
Capable of being killed by snow, and fully at home on the snow peak;
Sleeping at night, and in bloom both at dawn and after;
Making Lakshmi's bowl over-generous to Your Vedic worshippers,
Such the twin lotus of Your foot, it triumphs: what wonder herein?
VERSE 88
Your foot is the seat for good repute, o Goddess;
How then from danger to safety did it come? The wise treat it as of tortoise-shell hardness.
How then was it that Shiva,
At his wedding, could lift it with a tender mind to place it on the ritual stone?
VERSE 89
With fingernails like moons, putting to shame
The lotus hands of celestial damsels, and feet that seem to mock celestial trees,
O tragic one, Chandi, Your twin feet offer fruit to heaven dwellers
With leaf-tender finger-tips, and bring secure riches to the poor instantly and incessantly.
VERSE 90
Giving riches to the needy as required and of its store of honey
Distributing plentifully sweetness around; into such a beauty
Of the celestial blossom of Your feet, immersed altogether,
Let my life go merged with legs and inner organs into six-footed bee-hood.
VERSE 91
Your young domesticated cygnets, intent on learning from You the sportive pose of steps,
Practising still with faults, o one of graceful gait, on their not giving up,
With the sound of gem-filled anklets imitating,
It would seem now that You are teaching them.
VERSE 92
Gone as they are to Your couch-hood, Brahma, Vishnu, Ishvara, Rudra and others;
Shiva wearing a deceptive canopy derived from his crystal light;
By Your radiance projected on to it and turned to a magenta shade,
As the very embodiment of erotic bliss, he charms the view.
VERSE 93
Curly in hair and naturally simple in smile, with a magenta-flower-supple mind,
Bust firm like a kitchen mashing stone, extremely slender at waist,
With solid shoulders and hips, thus Shiva's world to save,
She reigns supreme, a certain kindliness called magenta.
VERSE 94
The dark zone of the moon is musk; the moon's orb is water;
The moon's phases they are camphor bits filling a box of ebony,
Which, when emptied daily by Your joys,
For Your sake, Brahma fills it again and again.
VERSE 95
You being the consort of Shiva, it is difficult indeed
For unsettled minds to attain the equivalent of the way of Your worship;
Whatever limitless gains they, the divinities such as Indra and others might have had,
Those psychic powers such as Anima, from just outside Your door they got them.
VERSE 96
The wife of Brahma, how many poets does she not woo?
How many are there not, who, by having some wealth, can claim Lakshmi's hand?
O constancy's ultimate meaning, outside Shiva,
The contact with Your breasts is hard even to a favourite garden tree.
VERSE 97
As the Goddess of the Word, Veda-knowers speak of You as Brahma's wife;
Lakshmi is Vishnu's wedded one, and the Mountain Daughter is Shiva's consort;
Certain others as the unattainable and boundless fourth state refer to You;
While you remain as the great Maya, making the universe go round, as queen of the Ultimate Absolute.
VERSE 98
When, o Mother, tell me, shall this thy supplicant drink
Of the ablution water of Your magenta sap-smeared feet?
As causing even one dumb born to be a poet,
When will he enjoy within the flavour of the betel juice in the lotus mouth of the Word-Goddess?
VERSE 99
Sporting with Saraswati and with Lakshmi as co-consort with Brahma and Vishnu
While disrupting with his charming body the constancy of Rati to her lord,
With banished animality and bondage, living long,
He enjoys what is known as ultimate bliss, your supplicant.
VERSE 100
To carry out the ritual propitiation of the sun by waving flames,
To offer oblations to the moon, the source of nectar, by particles of moonstone water,
To appease the deep with offerings of water its own,
Such, o Mother is this wordy praise with words Your own.