Love's archway and the darting fish

A toraṇa is not an architectural arch in general. It is the decorated gateway raised over a doorway for a festival or a wedding, hung with mango leaves, flowers and cloth; the word carries the occasion with it. So the first name is not saying that her brows are curved like an arch. It is saying that her face is a wedding house, that the wedding is Love's, and that the brows are the garland strung over the door to announce it. This is a forward reference. Twelve names later the stotra will describe the marriage thread that Kāmeśvara has tied around her neck, using the same word — māṅgalya — that appears here in māṅgalya-gṛha. The wedding announced at the eyebrows is celebrated at the throat.

The second name is one of the most quietly technical images in the whole hymn. Parivāha, in the dictionary, is the overflow of a tank and the channel dug to carry the surplus away: the word belongs to irrigation, not to poetry. The picture is therefore precise. Her face is a reservoir that has filled past its lip; the beauty running out of it has cut a channel; and in that channel there are fish. Śaṅkara uses the same rare word in the same position in the Saundaryalaharī, describing the parting of her hair as the outlet-channel of the flood of her facial beauty, which makes this one of the closest verbal contacts between the two texts.

The fish matter. In Sanskrit poetry a beautiful woman's eyes are conventionally compared to fish, and the comparison is not merely about shape: it is about the flicker, the fact that a fish in shallow water is visible chiefly as a movement. But the fish is also Kāma's emblem — he is makara-dhvaja and mīna-ketana, the god whose banner carries the sea-creature — so the second name, like the first, has quietly put Love's insignia on her face. Two names, two pieces of Kāma's wedding equipment: his archway and his flag.

One word here deserves an honest warning. Cillikā, the word for eyebrow, is not in Monier-Williams with that meaning. The 1899 dictionary records cilli as a bird of prey and cillī as a pot-herb, and cillikā only as a variant of those. The sense "eyebrow" is what the commentators take, it is what the context demands, and it is recorded in later Sanskrit lexicons and in the modern Indo-Aryan languages; but a student working only from Monier-Williams will not find it, and would be entitled to be puzzled. This is worth knowing as a general caution. The sahasranāma draws on a vocabulary that is partly regional, partly late, and partly technical to its own tradition, and the great colonial dictionary does not cover all of it.

Both lines are single sixteen-syllable names again, and both are long chains of nouns with a single word at the end that turns the chain into a description of her. Read the first as vadana - smara - māṅgalya - gṛha - toraṇa - cillikā: face, Love, auspicious, house, arch, eyebrow. The order is the order of the thought, from the largest container to the smallest thing described, and if you hold that shape the sixteen syllables come easily.

The consonant to watch in the first line is the ṅg of māṅgalya, a guttural nasal followed by a voiced velar, with the tongue-body making both at the same place. Then ly in māṅgalya and gṛ in gṛha, which contains another syllabic ṛ. Cillikā has a doubled l — cil-li-kā — and the doubling must be heard, because the metre counts the first syllable heavy on the strength of it.

The second line is harder. Vaktra opens with the cluster kt, unvoiced velar into unvoiced dental, and then r: vak-tra, three consonants with only one vowel among them. Lakṣmī has the kṣ conjunct followed immediately by m, so the word is really lakṣ-mī and the ṣ must be audible. Calanmīnābha hides a sandhi: the present participle calat, moving, has had its final t assimilated to the m that follows, giving calan-mīna — another instance of the -at participle, the fourth in six verses. And locanā ends the line with three light, open syllables, which is why the whole thing lands softly after so much consonantal traffic.

One rhythmic point. Both of these names describe motion, and the metre cooperates. The first line is dominated by long vowels — mā, gṛ is short but tora and cilli give a settled, arch-like shape — while the second accelerates through vaktra-lakṣmī and only opens out at parīvāha. Chanting them at the same speed flattens something the poet built in.

For contemplation, the tradition takes the eyebrows seriously for a reason beyond ornament. The point between the brows is where the ājñā-cakra is located, and Śaṅkara's poem places Śiva there. Whether or not you take that up as a practice, the verse gives you somewhere definite to rest the attention while chanting: the arch above the door, and then the water going past.