Part X — Nāmas 275–304 (Ślokas 65–70): The Cosmic Body, the Mother of All, and the Sound Beyond Name
ॐ श्रीमात्रे नमः · oṃ śrīmātre namaḥ
World as a blink, and the sound before name
Part X widens to the cosmic, then returns to the essential. She is seated now in the orb of the sun, as before in the moon; named Bhairavī and Bhagamālinī, lotus-throned, the sister of Viṣṇu. Then the hymn opens onto her cosmic body: the worlds arise and perish with the opening and closing of her eyes, and in the very words of the Puruṣa-sūkta she is thousand-headed, thousand-eyed, thousand-footed. She is the mother of all that lives, from Brahmā to the worm; the orderer of dharma whose own command is the Veda; the reality before whom even the scriptures bow, the pearl within the shell of all revelation. And at the last the names turn inward — to Pūrṇā, the Full; to the primal sound (Nāda-rūpā) and the silence beyond name and form (Nāma-rūpa-vivarjitā); to the seed-syllable Hrīṃ; and to the freedom that is the end of all preference, with nothing to reject and nothing to accept.
॥ श्रीललितासहस्रनामस्तोत्रम् ॥
The Thousand Names — Ślokas 65–70 (Nāmas 275–304)
Śloka 65
भानुमण्डलमध्यस्था भैरवी भगमालिनी ।
पद्मासना भगवती पद्मनाभसहोदरी ॥ ६५॥
bhānu-maṇḍala-madhyasthā bhairavī bhagamālinī |
padmāsanā bhagavatī padmanābha-sahodarī ǁ 65 ǁ
275. भानुमण्डलमध्यस्था — Bhānu-maṇḍala-madhyasthā
Translation: Who abides at the centre of the solar orb (bhānu-maṇḍala).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: As she dwelt in the moon's orb, she dwells now at the centre of the sun's. The apavāda: sun and moon are the two great lights — the moon the cool nectar of the cleared mind, the sun the blazing light of pure knowing; to be the centre of the solar disc is to be the still point of the light of consciousness itself, the source from which all illumination radiates. She is the light within the light. (In the inner astronomy the sun and moon are piṅgalā and iḍā; she is the central suṣumṇā between them.)
Śrī Vidyā: Bhānu-maṇḍala-madhyasthā is seated in the solar circle — the sūrya-maṇḍala of the meditative body, the seat of the inner sun; with the lunar seat just named, she is the centre of both luminaries.
276. भैरवी — Bhairavī
Translation: Bhairavī — the consort of Bhairava; the supreme Śakti of the Bhairava-tantras.
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: She is Bhairavī — the power of the fearsome Bhairava. The apavāda: the “terror” of Bhairava is the dissolving fire before which the limited self trembles; Bhairavī is that very power — fearsome only to the ego, utter refuge to the one who lets the ego go. (Bhayāpahā, the remover of fear, and Bhairavī, the fierce, are one: she frightens away nothing but the unreal.)
Śrī Vidyā: Bhairavī is the supreme Śakti of the Bhairava-tantras, one of the Mahāvidyās; the fierce, sovereign form of the Goddess.
277. भगमालिनी — Bhagamālinī
Translation: Bhagamālinī — garlanded with bhaga (the six divine glories), and a Nityā-Śakti.
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: She wears the garland of bhaga — the sixfold glory (sovereignty, might, fame, beauty, knowledge, dispassion). The apavāda: bhaga is the fullness of divine excellence, and to be “garlanded with bhaga” is to wear the perfections as ornaments, not to acquire them — they are the natural radiance of the Self, strung as a garland about the one who is their source.
Śrī Vidyā: Bhagamālinī is the second Nityā-devatā of the Śrī Vidyā (after Kāmeśvarī) and the bearer of the garland of the six bhagas; the glories that make the bhagavatī.
278. पद्मासना — Padmāsanā
Translation: Seated upon the lotus (padma).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: She sits on the lotus throne. The apavāda: the lotus, rooted in mud yet unstained and open to the light, is the image of the manifest opened toward the transcendent; to be “lotus-seated” is to be enthroned upon the purest unfolding of creation — the seat that, like the seer, is in the world and untouched by it.
Śrī Vidyā: Padmāsanā is enthroned on the lotus, as Brahmā and Lakṣmī are; the padma is the unfolded cosmos and the pure support of the deity.
279. भगवती — Bhagavatī
Translation: Bhagavatī — the divine Lady, possessor of all bhaga (glory).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: She is Bhagavatī — the feminine of Bhagavān, the one who possesses bhaga in full. The apavāda: the title names the totality of the six glories as hers — yet, as Nirguṇā, she is also beyond even these; “Bhagavatī” is the supreme reality named in its aspect of all-glorious fullness, the saguṇa face of the attributeless.
Śrī Vidyā: Bhagavatī is the supreme divine Lady, full of the six bhagas; the standard exalted title of the Goddess.
280. पद्मनाभसहोदरी — Padmanābha-sahodarī
Translation: The sister (sahodarī) of Padmanābha (Viṣṇu, the lotus-naveled).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: She is the sister of Viṣṇu, from whose navel-lotus the worlds arise. The apavāda: the kinship-name binds the Goddess to the preserver as his very sister — and in the lore the Devī is Viṣṇu's sister; the apavāda hears in it the non-difference of the powers, the great deities so intimate they are siblings, branches of the one. (Viṣṇu preserves; she is Goptrī — kin in function as in essence.)
Śrī Vidyā: Padmanābha-sahodarī is the sister of Viṣṇu — affirming the unity of the Śaiva-Śākta and Vaiṣṇava streams, the Goddess as Viṣṇu's own kin.
Śloka 66
उन्मेषनिमिषोत्पन्न-विपन्नभुवनावलिः ।
सहस्रशीर्षवदना सहस्राक्षी सहस्रपात् ॥ ६६॥
unmeṣa-nimiṣotpanna-vipanna-bhuvanāvaliḥ |
sahasra-śīrṣa-vadanā sahasrākṣī sahasrapāt ǁ 66 ǁ
Here the hymn opens onto the cosmic form. With a single image it states the whole relation of the world to the Self: the entire array of worlds arises and perishes with the opening and closing of her eyes (unmeṣa-nimiṣa) — the universe is the blink of awareness, present while she “looks,” withdrawn when she “closes,” never more substantial than that. And then, in the very words of the Puruṣa-sūkta, she is named thousand-headed, thousand-eyed, thousand-footed: the cosmic Puruṣa is herself, every head and eye and foot in all the worlds her own. The world is her glance; the body of the world is her body.
281. उन्मेषनिमिषोत्पन्नविपन्नभुवनावलिः — Unmeṣa-nimiṣotpanna-vipanna-bhuvanāvaliḥ
Translation: With the mere opening (unmeṣa) and closing (nimiṣa) of whose eyes the ranks of worlds (bhuvanāvali) come into being and pass away.
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: The great cosmological image: when she opens her eyes, the worlds spring up; when she closes them, the worlds dissolve. The apavāda: the entire universe is no more than the play of her glance — projected in the opening, withdrawn in the closing, having exactly the reality of what is present only while looked at. Creation and dissolution are reduced to a blink; the worlds are her seeing, and her seeing is herself. There is nothing the world is, apart from her momentary regard — the cosmic adhyāropa and apavāda in the flutter of an eyelid.
Śrī Vidyā: This celebrated name makes the cosmos the rhythm of the Goddess's blinking; sṛṣṭi and saṃhāra are her unmeṣa and nimiṣa — the pulse (spanda) of consciousness opening and closing, worlds upon worlds.
282. सहस्रशीर्षवदना — Sahasra-śīrṣa-vadanā
Translation: Of a thousand heads and faces (sahasra-śīrṣa, sahasra-vadana).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: In the words of the Puruṣa-sūkta, she is thousand-headed. The apavāda: “a thousand” means numberless — every head in all the worlds is hers; the cosmic person (Puruṣa) whom the Veda hymns is the Goddess, the single awareness wearing every face. To be thousand-headed is to be the one looking out through all heads. (As the Gītā's viśva-rūpa, now in the feminine.)
Śrī Vidyā: Sahasra-śīrṣa-vadanā is the cosmic form of the Puruṣa-sūkta (“sahasra-śīrṣā puruṣaḥ”) in feminine guise; the Devī as the all-formed cosmic person.
283. सहस्राक्षी — Sahasrākṣī
Translation: Thousand-eyed (sahasra-akṣī).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: Thousand-eyed — numberless eyes. The apavāda: she is the single seeing in every eye that sees; “thousand-eyed” is the one witness looking out through all the eyes in all the worlds, the seer that is never multiplied though the eyes are countless. (Recall the merciful glance, the lotus eyes — now the cosmic eye, everywhere.)
Śrī Vidyā: Sahasrākṣī continues the Puruṣa-sūkta image; the all-seeing cosmic form, every eye in creation her own.
284. सहस्रपात् — Sahasrapāt
Translation: Thousand-footed (sahasra-pād).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: Thousand-footed — the cosmic form complete, by which she pervades and “stands upon” all. The apavāda: as the Puruṣa covered the earth on all sides and yet stood beyond it, her thousand feet are her presence everywhere supporting all — the one ground standing in every standing thing, while exceeding the whole. The cosmic body is named entire: heads, eyes, feet — she is the all-pervading Puruṣa, the world her own form.
Śrī Vidyā: Sahasrapāt completes the Puruṣa-sūkta triad; the Devī as the cosmic person who pervades and transcends the worlds.
Śloka 67
आब्रह्मकीटजननी वर्णाश्रमविधायिनी ।
निजाज्ञारूपनिगमा पुण्यापुण्यफलप्रदा ॥ ६७॥
ābrahma-kīṭa-jananī varṇāśrama-vidhāyinī |
nijājñā-rūpa-nigamā puṇyāpuṇya-phala-pradā ǁ 67 ǁ
285. आब्रह्मकीटजननी — Ābrahma-kīṭa-jananī
Translation: The mother (jananī) of all beings, from Brahmā down to the worm (kīṭa).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: She is the mother of everything that lives — from the creator-god at the summit to the smallest insect. The apavāda: “from Brahmā to the worm” spans the whole hierarchy of beings, and she is the single source of all — and since she is their substance (Sarva-mayī), the highest and the lowest are equally her own, equally near; the worm is no farther from the Mother than Brahmā. Motherhood here is the non-dual: all beings are not made by her but born of her, of her own being.
Śrī Vidyā: Ābrahma-kīṭa-jananī is the universal Mother of every creature from the demiurge to the insect; the jagad-ambā who bears all beings.
286. वर्णाश्रमविधायिनी — Varṇāśrama-vidhāyinī
Translation: Who ordains the order of varṇas (classes) and āśramas (stages of life).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: She lays down the social-spiritual order, the dharma of varṇa and āśrama. The apavāda: the ordered world of duty is her arrangement, the framework within which beings ripen — yet she who ordains it is herself beyond it (Dharmādharma-vivarjitā); she sets the law for the bound while remaining the free ground prior to all law. The order is real for the journey, and transcended at its end.
Śrī Vidyā: Varṇāśrama-vidhāyinī establishes the dharmic order of society and the life-stages; the upholder of ṛta and dharma in the world.
287. निजाज्ञारूपनिगमा — Nijājñā-rūpa-nigamā
Translation: Whose very command (ājñā) takes form as the Veda (nigama, scripture).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: The Veda itself is her command made into words. The apavāda: scripture is “her own ājñā in the form of the nigama” — the eternal sound-of-truth is her will, and the Veda is not a book about her but the very utterance of her command. Yet, being her command, it is subordinate to her — a pointer issuing from the reality it points to; the Veda has authority because it is her word, and its authority is fulfilled when it brings the seeker to her. (The next name shows even the Veda as the dust on her feet.)
Śrī Vidyā: Nijājñā-rūpa-nigamā is she whose command is the Veda; the śruti is her ordinance, the apauruṣeya word that is her own will.
288. पुण्यापुण्यफलप्रदा — Puṇyāpuṇya-phala-pradā
Translation: The giver of the fruits of merit (puṇya) and demerit (apuṇya).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: She dispenses the fruits of good and ill deeds — the just order of karma. The apavāda: the moral economy by which deeds bear fruit is her dispensation — yet she who awards the fruits is herself beyond merit and demerit (Dharmādharma-vivarjitā), the impartial ground in which the whole law of consequence operates. She gives the fruits to the doers; to the one who knows her, the doership itself dissolves, and with it the fruits. The law binds the doer; she frees the knower.
Śrī Vidyā: Puṇyāpuṇya-phala-pradā is the dispenser of karmic fruit, the just power behind the moral law; she who, transcending it, can also remit it by grace.
Śloka 68
श्रुतिसीमन्तसिन्दूरीकृतपादाब्जधूलिका ।
सकलागमसन्दोह-शुक्तिसम्पुटमौक्तिका ॥ ६८॥
śruti-sīmanta-sindūrī-kṛta-pādābja-dhūlikā |
sakalāgama-sandoha-śukti-sampuṭa-mauktikā ǁ 68 ǁ
289. श्रुतिसीमन्तसिन्दूरीकृतपादाब्जधूलिका — Śruti-sīmanta-sindūrī-kṛta-pādābja-dhūlikā
Translation: The dust of whose lotus-feet becomes the vermilion in the parting of the hair of the Vedas (imagined as wedded women bowing at her feet).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: An exquisite image: the Vedas are figured as her wedded handmaids, and the dust of her feet, as they bow, settles in the partings of their hair like the red sindūra of the married. The apavāda: even the Vedas — the highest authority, the very sound of truth — are her devotees, bowing so low that her foot-dust adorns them; scripture itself reveres her. The teaching is the Veda's own subordination: the śruti is supreme among words, and she is the reality the supreme words bow to — the dust of her feet more exalted than the crown of the Vedas. Knowledge bows to the Self that knowledge is for.
Śrī Vidyā: Śruti-sīmanta-sindūrī-kṛta-pādābja-dhūlikā depicts the Vedas as married women whose hair-partings are reddened by the dust of the Mother's feet; the supremacy of the Goddess over even the śruti, a celebrated image of the hymn.
290. सकलागमसन्दोहशुक्तिसम्पुटमौक्तिका — Sakalāgama-sandoha-śukti-sampuṭa-mauktikā
Translation: The pearl (mauktika) enclosed within the oyster-shell (śukti-sampuṭa) formed by the totality of all the scriptures (āgamas).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: Another jewel-image: all the scriptures together are an oyster-shell, and she is the single pearl within. The apavāda: the vast body of revealed texts — all the āgamas, with their countless words — exist to enclose and yield one thing, as the shell exists for the pearl; she is that pearl, the single reality all scripture is “about,” for whose sake the whole shell of words is grown. Open all the scriptures and you find her; she is their one content. The many words, the one meaning.
Śrī Vidyā: Sakalāgama-sandoha-śukti-sampuṭa-mauktikā is the pearl within the shell of all the āgamas; the essence and sole purport of the entire revealed corpus.
Śloka 69
पुरुषार्थप्रदा पूर्णा भोगिनी भुवनेश्वरी ।
अम्बिकानादिनिधना हरिब्रह्मेन्द्रसेविता ॥ ६९॥
puruṣārtha-pradā pūrṇā bhoginī bhuvaneśvarī |
ambikā'nādi-nidhanā hari-brahmendra-sevitā ǁ 69 ǁ
291. पुरुषार्थप्रदा — Puruṣārtha-pradā
Translation: The bestower of the puruṣārthas — the four aims of life (dharma, artha, kāma, mokṣa).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: She grants all four human ends — virtue, wealth, pleasure, and liberation. The apavāda: she gives the three worldly aims to those who seek them, and the fourth, liberation, to those ready for it — and that fourth is not a fruit added but the recognition of her who is the seeker's own Self; she “gives liberation” by being it. The first three are her gifts; the fourth is herself.
Śrī Vidyā: Puruṣārtha-pradā grants all four goals of life, worldly and supreme; the Śrī Vidyā's promise of both bhukti and mukti.
292. पूर्णा — Pūrṇā
Translation: Pūrṇā — the full, complete, lacking nothing.
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: A supreme word: she is “the Full.” The apavāda: this is the plenitude (pūrṇatā) the whole hymn has circled — the fullness the negations uncovered and the Sarva-/Mahā- names affirmed, here in a single word. As the great invocation says, “that is full, this is full; from the full the full proceeds; taking the full from the full, the full alone remains.” She is that pūrṇa — to which nothing can be added and from which nothing is lost, even as worlds pour out of her. The Full does not diminish by creating, nor increase by dissolving.
Śrī Vidyā: Pūrṇā is the perfect fullness of the Absolute (the pūrṇam of the Īśa Upaniṣad's invocation); the Goddess as the plenum the manifold never depletes.
293. भोगिनी — Bhoginī
Translation: Bhoginī — the enjoyer (and she of bhoga: delight, and the coiled power).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: She is the enjoyer. The apavāda: bhoga is experience-and-delight, and she is the one experiencer in all enjoying (as Mahā-bhogā showed) — yet her enjoyment is the self-relishing of the Full, which, complete, savours only its own being. (Bhoginī also carries the sense of the serpent — the coiled kuṇḍalinī — and of luxuriant delight; she enjoys as the very capacity for joy.)
Śrī Vidyā: Bhoginī is the Goddess of enjoyment and of the coiled power (bhoga); she who grants and is the experience of bliss.
294. भुवनेश्वरी — Bhuvaneśvarī
Translation: Bhuvaneśvarī — the supreme ruler of the worlds (bhuvana).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: She is the sovereign of all the worlds. The apavāda: Bhuvaneśvarī — like Sarveśvarī — names not dominion over an other but the all-pervading lordship of the One whose own being the worlds are; she rules the worlds as the Self rules its own appearings, by being their very ground.
Śrī Vidyā: Bhuvaneśvarī is the supreme sovereign of the worlds, one of the Mahāvidyās; the Goddess as the queen of cosmic space, the ākāśa of consciousness in which the worlds float.
295. अम्बिका — Ambikā
Translation: Ambikā — the Mother.
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: The tender, ancient name: Ambikā, “Mother.” The apavāda: after the cosmic vastness — thousand-headed, world-sovereign — the hymn returns to the intimate; she is the nearest and dearest, the Mother. And the apavāda is gentle: “Mother” is the relation in which the non-dual is most easily loved — for the child is of the mother's own substance, born of her, never truly separate. To call her Ambikā is to know oneself her own.
Śrī Vidyā: Ambikā is the supreme Mother, an ancient Vedic name of the Goddess (Rudra's Ambikā); the maternal heart of the Devī.
296. अनादिनिधना — Anādi-nidhanā
Translation: Anādi-nidhanā — without origin (anādi) and without end (nidhana).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: She is beginningless and endless. The apavāda: beginning and end belong to what is in time; she is anādi-nidhanā as the timeless (Nityā) in which time itself arises — without a first moment, for she precedes the very measure of moments, and without a last, for there is nothing beyond her into which she could cease. The Full, again: no edge in time.
Śrī Vidyā: Anādi-nidhanā is the beginningless and endless Absolute; the eternal Goddess, source and end of all that begins and ends.
297. हरिब्रह्मेन्द्रसेविता — Hari-brahmendra-sevitā
Translation: Who is served by Hari (Viṣṇu), Brahmā, and Indra.
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: The great gods themselves serve her. The apavāda: as Brahmā, Viṣṇu and Indra hymned her after the war and as Bhairava worshipped her, so here they “serve” — the highest powers attending the one whose powers they are; their service is the cosmos's order arranging itself around its centre. The served and the servers are one reality, the centre and its radiance.
Śrī Vidyā: Hari-brahmendra-sevitā is attended by the foremost gods; the supreme deity whom even Viṣṇu, Brahmā and Indra wait upon.
Śloka 70
नारायणी नादरूपा नामरूपविवर्जिता ।
ह्रींकारी ह्रीमती हृद्या हेयोपादेयवर्जिता ॥ ७०॥
nārāyaṇī nāda-rūpā nāma-rūpa-vivarjitā |
hrīṅkārī hrīmatī hṛdyā heyopādeya-varjitā ǁ 70 ǁ
The part closes on a cluster of names that turn from the cosmic to the essential. She is Nārāyaṇī — the supreme power named in Viṣṇu's own great name — and then, in two strokes, the hymn states the whole structure of manifestation and its transcendence: Nāda-rūpā, “whose form is the primal sound,” the first vibration from which all name-and-form unfolds; and Nāma-rūpa-vivarjitā, “devoid of name and form,” the silent ground prior to that first sound. She is the source of the manifold and the void of the manifold at once. Then Hrīṅkārī — she who is the seed-sound “Hrīṃ,” the praṇava of the Goddess — and at the last, Heyopādeya-varjitā, “free of the to-be-rejected and the to-be-accepted”: in her there is nothing to refuse and nothing to grasp, for she is the whole, beyond every preference, the end of all choosing.
298. नारायणी — Nārāyaṇī
Translation: Nārāyaṇī — the supreme power of/as Nārāyaṇa (Viṣṇu); the all-resort.
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: She is Nārāyaṇī — the feminine of Nārāyaṇa, “the abode and resort of all beings” (nara-ayana). The apavāda: the name means the ground in which all beings rest and to which they go; she is Nārāyaṇī as that final resort — the home of all, in whom every wave of being subsides. (As Padmanābha-sahodarī she was Viṣṇu's sister; as Nārāyaṇī she is the Nārāyaṇa-reality itself, in the feminine.)
Śrī Vidyā: Nārāyaṇī is the supreme Śakti, celebrated in the Devī-māhātmya's hymn (“Nārāyaṇī namo'stu te”); the all-resort, the Goddess as the ground of all.
299. नादरूपा — Nāda-rūpā
Translation: Nāda-rūpā — whose form is nāda, the primal vibration/sound.
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: She is the form of nāda — the first subtle sound, the original vibration from which all sound, and through sound all name-and-form, unfolds. The apavāda: nāda is the first stir of manifestation, the humming edge of the unmanifest as it becomes the manifest; she is that first vibration — the praṇava before it divides into letters, the un-struck sound (anāhata) at the root of all utterance. From her as nāda the whole world of name proceeds.
Śrī Vidyā: Nāda-rūpā is the Goddess as the primal sound, the first throb of Śiva-Śakti from which the mātṛkā (the alphabet) and all manifestation arise; the anāhata-nāda of the yogins.
300. नामरूपविवर्जिता — Nāma-rūpa-vivarjitā
Translation: Nāma-rūpa-vivarjitā — free of all name (nāma) and form (rūpa).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: And at once, her opposite face: she is beyond name and form. The apavāda: name-and-form is the whole fabric of the manifest world — everything that can be named or shaped; she is “devoid” of it as the formless, nameless ground prior to the first sound that began it. Set beside Nāda-rūpā, the pair states everything: she is the source of name-and-form (as nāda) and utterly beyond it (as the silent absolute). The first sound is hers, and the silence before it is hers.
Śrī Vidyā: Nāma-rūpa-vivarjitā is the Absolute beyond name and form, the nirguṇa ground; with Nāda-rūpā, the pair spans manifestation and its transcendence.
301. ह्रींकारी — Hrīṅkārī
Translation: Hrīṅkārī — she whose nature is the seed-sound “Hrīṃ.”
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: She is the Hrīṃkāra — the seed-syllable “Hrīṃ,” called the praṇava of the Devī, as Oṃ is of the Veda. The apavāda: as she was the root-mantra and all mantras, here she is named the single bīja that is her sound-body — and Hrīṃ, the “māyā-bīja,” holds the whole movement of veiling and revealing in one syllable; to sound it is to invoke the entire reality in seed. She is that seed-sound, the one syllable that is herself.
Śrī Vidyā: Hrīṅkārī is the Goddess as the Hrīṃkāra, the supreme bīja (the māyā-bīja / Bhuvaneśvarī-bīja), held to be the praṇava of the Śākta tradition; the sound-essence of the Devī.
302. ह्रीमती — Hrīmatī
Translation: Hrīmatī — endowed with hrī (modesty, and the syllable Hrīṃ).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: She is “possessed of hrī” — both modesty and the syllable Hrīṃ. The apavāda: hrī is the inner reserve, the sacred shyness that veils what is most precious — and she who is Hrīṅkārī is “full of hrī” as the reality that does not display itself, that keeps its own infinitude veiled (Tirodhāna-karī) until grace unveils it. Her modesty is the self-concealment of the supreme — and the word holds her bīja within it.
Śrī Vidyā: Hrīmatī is endowed with hrī — both the virtue of modesty and the bīja Hrīṃ; the Goddess whose nature is the sacred syllable and the sacred reserve.
303. हृद्या — Hṛdyā
Translation: Hṛdyā — pleasing to the heart, and seated in the heart (hṛd).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: She is “of the heart” — lovely to it and dwelling in it. The apavāda: the heart (hṛdaya) is the traditional seat of the Self; she is hṛdyā as the one most dear, because she is the heart's own innermost being — what the heart loves when it loves anything is, at root, her; and she is found not far off but in the cave of the heart, the nearest of all. The dearest, because the innermost.
Śrī Vidyā: Hṛdyā is the heart-dwelling, heart-pleasing Goddess; she who abides in the hṛt-padma, the lotus of the heart, and is the heart's delight.
304. हेयोपादेयवर्जिता — Heyopādeya-varjitā
Translation: Heyopādeya-varjitā — devoid of anything to be rejected (heya) or to be accepted (upādeya).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: The cadence: in her there is nothing to reject and nothing to accept. The apavāda makes its final move for this part — acceptance and rejection are the two arms of preference, by which the limited self sorts the world into the desirable and the undesirable; she is beyond both, for she is the whole, with no outside from which to take in and no part to cast away. To the one who knows her there is nothing to grasp and nothing to refuse — the very seesaw of liking and disliking, the engine of all bondage, comes to rest. This is freedom itself: the end of choosing, because there is no longer a second thing to choose between.
Śrī Vidyā: Heyopādeya-varjitā is the Absolute beyond acceptance and rejection; the non-dual reality in which the duality of “to be sought / to be shunned” has no place — the peace beyond all preference.
Devanagari per the sanskritdocuments.org recension (Brahmāṇḍa Purāṇa, Uttarakhaṇḍa; Hayagrīva–Agastya saṃvāda). Transliteration, translation, and commentary original to this edition. — End of Part X.
