The Lalita Sahasranama

The structure of the thousand names

In the tradition of worshipping the Goddess, the sahasranama recitation is an ancient form, one that threads a deity’s thousand names through a tight weave of meter. The Lalita Sahasranama has its origin in the Lalitopakhyana, which appears in the Uttara Khanda of the Brahmanda Purana, where Vishnu in his Hayagriva form gives this text to his student, the sage Agastya. Dating it in the traditional way is hard, yet from the language and style of the text most scholars place it near the eighth or ninth century.

Here is the setting of the story. The sage Agastya and his wife Lopamudra were great devotees of the Goddess, and one question stood before them: what is the most complete form of Srividya worship? Agastya asked Hayagriva, and in answer Hayagriva gave this sahasranama. Tradition holds that these names were composed by eight speech-goddesses at Lalita’s own command. The style of the text is a namavali, which means each name is repeated as a meditation by placing “ॐ” before it and “नमः” after it. There is also the sahasranama-stotra style, in which these same thousand names are bound into anushtup verses.

The order of the names is no accident. The first eighty-four move through the Goddess’s purpose in taking form and a description of her body from head to feet. The names that follow describe the structure of the Srichakra and the family of goddesses. The middle names are the gist of the story of Bhandasura’s slaying. The last few hundred are the technical vocabulary of Vedic philosophy: सच्चिदानन्द-रूपिणी, सर्व-व्यापिनी, ब्रह्म-विद्या।

The Srividya tradition

To understand Lalita, a short introduction to the Srividya tradition is needed. It is a Dakshinachara, or right-hand, branch of Tantra, which means it keeps in step with Vedic rites and stands apart from the practices of the left-hand path. The Srichakra, an interlocking yantra built from nine triangles, is the central symbol of this tradition. The four upper triangles belong to Shiva, the principle of spirit; the five lower triangles belong to Shakti, the principle of nature. The point at the center is Lalita’s place.

The hidden center of the tradition is the Panchadashakshari mantra, a small formula of fifteen syllables. The initiating guru gives this mantra to the student, and later it is completed with the sixteenth syllable, the Shodashi. Thousands of pages of commentary have been written on this small mantra, the most famous of them Bhaskararaya’s “Varivasya Rahasya,” from the middle of the eighteenth century.

The Bhandasura story at the center

According to the accounts in the Devi Bhagavata and the Brahmanda Purana, Lalita took form for one specific purpose: to slay the demon named Bhandasura. Here is the story of how Bhanda came to be. When Shiva burned Kamadeva to ash with his third eye, a terrible demon rose from that ash, and he was given the name Bhanda, which means “the one who is empty.” Brahma granted him a boon: whatever weapon he fought with, he would win half of that weapon’s power from his opponent.

Bhandasura conquered all three worlds. The gods called on Lalita, and she appeared from the fire-pit of consciousness, carrying the radiance of a thousand suns, four-armed, arrayed with noose, goad, bow, and arrow. With her Mantrini, the power of mantra, and her Varahi, the power of the rod, she slew Bhandasura. About a hundred names in the middle of the sahasranama tell this war story in compressed form.

The structure, in ten books

We have divided the thousand names into ten books, each book of about a hundred names. This thematic division follows the sense and coherence found in Bhaskararaya’s “Saubhagya Bhaskara” commentary.

The old method of recitation

By tradition this recitation is special on Fridays, because Friday is Lalita’s day. The method is simple. After the morning bath, sitting before a Sri Yantra or some image of Lalita, you make a simple resolve: “I am reciting this stotra for the love of the goddess Lalita Tripurasundari.” Then the thousand names, without a pause, without an error, with devotion. The whole thing in thirty-five to forty minutes.

New readers can finish it in ten days, at the pace of one book a day. In the traditional panchanga recitation, all five parts come together: the patala, the paddhati, the kavacha, the sahasranama, and the stava. Reciting the sahasranama alone is also considered complete.