The end of the negations, and Durgā

The negative series ends at niratyayā, the hundred and eighty-seventh name, having run without a break since nirādhārā. What follows is not a change of method but a change of material. The prefix dus behaves exactly as nis does: it becomes dur before a vowel or a voiced consonant, and it keeps a visarga before the unvoiced kh of duḥkha, which is precisely the pattern the reciter has spent seven verses learning. What has changed is the meaning. Nis subtracts; dus says that a thing is hard or bad. The hymn hands the same machine to a different word and produces the opposite kind of epithet, and the seam is at the end of the first line.

Nistulā is the best of the last four. Tulā is a balance, the pair of scales, and it is also the word for the ordeal by weighing in the law books, in which an accused person is placed in one pan and matched against a counterweight. From that comes the whole vocabulary of comparison: to be equal to something is to be in the balance with it. The stotra has spent forty verses comparing her to things, and much of the classical poetry that stands behind it — the Saundaryalaharī's weighing of her lips against coral and the bimba fruit, for instance — is built on the figure of the failed comparison. Nistulā says that there is nothing to put in the other pan.

Then the hair. This is the third time a body has broken into an abstract passage in this batch, after the autumn-moon face and the slender waist seven verses back, and it is the most conspicuous because of the colour. Nīla is the blue-black of the rain cloud and of the blue lotus, and in a hymn where she has been red from the first meditation verse — vermilion, dawn-coloured, a flood of red light drowning the world-eggs — her hair is the single dark thing about her. The Saundaryalaharī compares that mass of hair to a grove of blue lotuses and then claims that heaven's flowers move into it for the sake of its natural scent, which is the fullest treatment the tradition gives the image.

Durgā is the event of this verse. Of the thousand names, this is the only one that is simply the name of another goddess in her own right and nothing more, and it goes past in two syllables. Its oldest sense is not a person at all. In the Veda durga is a hard place: a defile, a difficult crossing, a stronghold. The hymn of the Durgā Sūkta asks Agni to carry us over all difficult places as a boat carries one over a river, and the Kaṭha Upaniṣad calls the path to the self a razor's edge, hard to cross, and says that the wise call that path a durga. Both of those senses sit inside the names on either side. Durlabhā, hard to get, and durgamā, hard to approach, are not describing an obstacle standing in front of her; they are saying that the difficulty is what she is. And durga as fortress gives the name its other classical reading, the stronghold that cannot be stormed.

What the name also does is import a whole other goddess and her literature. Durgā of the Devī Māhātmya is the warrior who kills Mahiṣa and Śumbha, and the great hymns of that text are addressed to her by name; one of the best known asks who but she, remembered, takes away the fear of every living creature, and calls her the remover of poverty, sorrow and fear. Two of those three appear here. Duḥkhahantrī is the next name but one, and bhayāpahā was a name eight verses back. The Lalitā tradition and the Devī Māhātmya tradition are distinct — different texts, different rites, different lineages — and this is one of the places where the later hymn reaches over and takes what it needs.

Duḥkhahantrī and sukhapradā close the verse and turn the hymn round. For fifty-six names the method has been removal; the last pair removes something and then puts something in its place. It is the hinge into the verses that follow, where every name will begin with sarva, all.

Two prefixes, one grammar. In the first line nis appears as nis before the dental t of nistulā, as nī with a long vowel and no consonant before the r of nīrāgā's cousin — here nī-la, though that nī is part of the word for blue and not the prefix at all, which is exactly the trap — and as nir before the vowels of nirapāyā and niratyayā. In the second line dus appears as dur before the voiced l and g of durlabhā, durgamā and durgā, and as duḥ before the unvoiced kh of duḥkhahantrī. Learning that these are two words behaving identically, rather than four or five separate forms, is the single most useful thing this verse teaches.

Nīlacikurā is where reciters go wrong, because after seven verses of ni- prefixes the ear expects another one. It is not. The word is nīla, blue-black, with a long ī, and then cikura, hair. Four short syllables follow the long one: nī-la-ci-ku-rā. Get the length of that first syllable right and the metre holds; treat it as a negative prefix and the whole quarter collapses.

Duḥkha has to be given its visarga. It is duḥ, with a light voiceless breath echoing the u, and then kha, an aspirated guttural. It is not dukkha, which is the Pali form and which most English speakers have met first, and it is not duka. The h of the visarga and the h of the aspiration are two separate events. Say duḥ-kha-han-trī slowly; there are three h sounds in the word and each is doing a different job.

The cluster ntr in hantrī is the same one that appeared in mamatāhantrī three verses ago, and the same feminine agent ending. Sukhapradā, by contrast, is four completely open syllables and is the easiest word in the batch — which is appropriate, since it is the only name in fifty-six that gives something outright.

Durgā is two syllables and both are heavy: dur with a full r, gā long. It is the shortest name in this batch and it should not be hurried through on the way to the next one. In practice many reciters mark it, slightly, and there is a reason to.

The metre is worth noticing because the third quarter repeats a rhythm from earlier in the batch exactly. Durlabhā durgamā durgā is three plus three plus two, which is the shape of nirlepā nirmalā nityā six verses back. The first quarter is three plus five, the second and fourth are four plus four. Breathe after niratyayā, which is also where the negations stop.

For contemplation this verse offers a change of posture. Fifty-six names have been removals, and it is possible to chant them and end up somewhere rather cold. The last two names of this verse are the tradition's own correction. Sorrow is struck down, which is a violent word, and then something is handed over. The traditional use of the verse follows the same logic: this is the passage people recite for someone who is suffering, and the name they are reciting toward is the last one.