Ārambha · Beginning
How to learn and chant the Lalitā Sahasranāma
The Lalitā Sahasranāma, often written Lalitha Sahasranamam, is the hymn of the thousand names of the Goddess Lalitā. It is preserved in the Brahmāṇḍa Purāṇa as a teaching given by Hayagrīva to the sage Agastya, and its thousand names are set in 182 shlokas, opened by the dhyāna verses in which you picture her before you name her. It is long, but it is learned the way it has always been learned: by ear, a verse at a time, chanted every day.
Krama
A way to learn it, step by step
- 1
Listen before you read
Play the dhyāna verses and the first three shlokas several times without looking at the text. Let the melody and the rhythm of the names settle first; reading is far easier once the ear knows where it is going.
Play the dhyāna and shlokas 1–3 - 2
Learn the sounds
Sanskrit has long and short vowels, aspirated and unaspirated consonants, and a row of retroflex sounds that English lacks, and each one changes a word. An hour with the letters and their sounds will save you from learning a name wrongly and having to unlearn it.
The letters and their sounds - 3
Take one shloka at a time
Open a shloka, turn on the loop, and chant along with the recording until you can keep pace. Slow the recording down if the names run together. Read it in Devanagari, in transliteration, or in your own script, and drop the transliteration as the script becomes familiar.
Begin with Shloka 1 - 4
Understand what you are saying
Tap each word to see which names it carries, what they mean, and how each compound is built. A name you understand is a name you remember, and the meaning is what turns recitation into prayer.
Look up any of the thousand names - 5
Add a shloka a day, and keep chanting from the start
When one shloka comes easily, add the next, and chant the whole range you know each day rather than only the new verse. At one shloka a day you will have all 182 in about six months; there is no hurry, and many people take a year.
Chant a range on loop - 6
Offer the names one by one
For arcana, worship with a flower or kumkum at each name, the names are recited separately as the nāmāvalī: oṃ, the name in the dative, and namaḥ, as in oṃ śrīmātre namaḥ.
Recite the nāmāvalī
Lipi
Read the whole text in your script
The complete stotram on one page, every verse linked to its study page.
Praśna
Questions people ask
Do I need to know Sanskrit?
No. Every verse is given in transliteration and with the meaning of every word, and the recording carries the pronunciation. Learning to read Devanagari helps, and the site is built to teach it as you go, but it is not where you have to begin.
How long does a full recitation take?
The recording used here runs a little over half an hour, from the dhyāna to the last shloka. Chanting at your own pace usually takes thirty to forty-five minutes.
What is the difference between the stotram and the nāmāvalī?
The stotram is the hymn as composed: 182 shlokas in which the names follow one another and often fuse at their edges by sandhi. The nāmāvalī is the same thousand names said one at a time, each turned to the dative and framed by oṃ and namaḥ, for worship with an offering at every name.
Which script should I read it in?
Whichever you read most easily. The whole text is here in Devanagari, in transliteration, and in Telugu, Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, Gujarati, Bengali and Odia, and every shloka page lets you switch between them.