Soundarya Lahari--Verse 88

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Padam te kIrtInAm prapadam apadam Devi vipadAm

katham nItam sadbhih kathina-kamathi-karpara-tulAm;

kathamcid bAhubhyAm upayamana-kAle purabhidA

yad AdAya nyastam drsadi daya-mAnena manasA

 

 

O Goddess! how is it that the fore-part of Thy foot, which is the

seat of all fame, which cannot be touched by danger [of any kind],

and which was somehow lifted at the time of [Thy] marriage by the

vanquisher of the [three] Pura-s, with a soft heart and placed on a

stone, has been made a peer of the hard tortoise shell by great poets?

 

Here the poet calls into question the propriety of comparing the

forepart of the Devi's foot, which has become reputed as the bestower

of the ends and aims of existence and as warding off all danger, to a

hard tortoise shell, which does little credit to the artistic skill

of great poets. Thre is also reading 'Katham vA, etc' when the

meaning would be: " How did Siva manage to lift, etc?' implying

therefore that Siva was llight-hearted to do the wrong thing by

placing the Devi's soft feet on a hard piece of flint. KaivalAsrama

remarks in his gloss on this stanza: " This stanza is not in accord

with SamkarAcArya's SampradAya, as it is not found either in the

Malayalam Manuscript or in the South Indian Manuscripts'. But Arthur

Avalon, in his Introduction to his edition of Ananda-laharI, quotes

this remarks and applies it to stanza 99, apparently by mistake.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yantra image in : SS homepage.

 

http://www.shaktisadhana.org/Newhomepage/sadhana/Commentaries.html

 

The Saundarya-Lahari of Sri Samkara-Bhagavatpad a.

By Pandit S. Subrahmanya Sastri and T.R Srinivasa Ayyangar.