Manu's vidyā, and the moon's

Vidyā is a technical term here and not the general word for knowledge, so start with that. It comes from √vid, to know, and it is grammatically feminine. In tantric usage that grammatical fact was put to work: the mantra of a goddess is called her vidyā, while the mantra of a male deity is a mantra. The fifteen-syllabled formula of this school is therefore the Śrīvidyā, and the school takes its name from the formula. When the stotra says manuvidyā it is not saying that she knows what Manu knew. It is saying that she is the formula in the form Manu handed it on — that the goddess and the syllables are the same object seen twice.

Behind the two names lies the tradition's account of how the vidyā came down. It speaks of a set of teachers, each associated with his own recension, and the number usually given is twelve; the lists differ by a name or two depending on which handbook you consult, which is worth knowing before treating any single list as authoritative. Manu and Candra stand at the head of most versions of it, and Kubera, Lopāmudrā, Manmatha, Agastya, Sūrya, Indra, Skanda, Śiva and Durvāsas appear in most. Only a few of these recensions survive as living practice; the two most widely followed are named after the syllable each begins with — the kādi line traced to Manmatha and the hādi line traced to Lopāmudrā. What the stotra does with all of this is quietly radical. It names two of the teachers and then declines to make her their pupil or their possession. She is the vidyā, in Manu's version and in Candra's alike, which means that a difference of lineage is a difference in how she is spoken and not a difference in who she is.

Then candra stops being a teacher and becomes the moon. This stotra has already put the moon on her forehead, made her face into a moon, and hung the eighth-night half-disc above her brow; now it places her at the centre of the lunar orb. The tradition counts sixteen digits in the moon, and worships them by name in the ritual preparation of the vessels: the same handbook that gives the twelve digits of the sun gives amṛtā, mānadā, pūṣā, tuṣṭi, puṣṭi, rati, dhṛti, śaśinī, candrikā, kānti, jyotsnā, śrī, prīti, aṅgadā, pūrṇā and pūrṇāmṛtā. Fifteen of the sixteen are what the eye sees waxing and waning across a fortnight. The sixteenth never appears and never diminishes, and the tradition connects that hidden digit with the hidden syllable that turns the fifteen-syllabled vidyā into the sixteen-syllabled one. To be at the centre of the disc is to be the part of it that does not change.

Cāru is a much simpler word and a very old one: pleasing, agreeable, esteemed, beautiful. The dictionary's range runs from beloved to merely pretty, and the stotra uses it three times in a row without embarrassment. There is a real change of register here after the lineage names, and it is not a lapse. A hymn that has just told you the goddess is a transmitted formula immediately tells you she has a nice smile, and the juxtaposition is the theology: the object of this practice is not an abstraction that happens to have been given a face.

The crescent in the last name has a history of its own. Śiva wears a digit of the moon in his matted hair, and the purāṇas explain it variously — as the digit spared when Dakṣa's curse consumed the rest, as his share of the churning of the ocean. On him it is a trophy of an old crisis. Here she simply wears one, and the poet's adjective is cāru: it is lovely. The stotra has been consistent about this. Everything that on Śiva is the residue of some ordeal is on her an ornament chosen because it suits her.

The most useful thing you can notice about this verse is its symmetry, because once you have it the verse recites itself. Both lines are four syllables, then four, then eight. Manuvidyā, candravidyā, candramaṇḍalamadhyagā. Cārurūpā, cāruhāsā, cārucandrakalādharā. The two short names in each line begin with the same element, and the long name in each line begins with it too. Nothing else in this part of the stotra is built so tightly, and hearing the two lines as answering each other is most of the work.

The first vowel is where the accuracy lies. Cāru has a long ā in its first syllable; candra has a short a. They are adjacent in the second line — cārucandra — and the contrast between the two is the whole rhythm of that word. Say cā for two beats and can for one, and the eight-syllable name falls into place.

Candra also gives you the cluster ndr: a dental n, a dental d and an r, three separate articulations with no vowel between them. Do not let the d disappear. Practise it against candrikā and candana, both of which you will meet elsewhere in this hymn.

Maṇḍala has the retroflex pair ṇḍ — tongue-tip curled back for both — immediately followed by a dental l, which is the sharpest back-to-front movement in the verse. Then madhyagā gives you dhy, an aspirated dental with the palatal glide after it: d, breath, y, said as one release rather than as three.

Vidyā has the conjunct dy, dental d into palatal y. It occurs twice in the first line and it is the single most useful cluster to get right in this verse, because the word will recur throughout the stotra and throughout the tradition.

The palatal c of cāru is an affricate made with the tongue-body flat against the hard palate, the same place as the y of yes. English speakers tend to produce the sound of "church", which is close enough to be understood and slightly too far forward. Aim it back.

One sandhi worth seeing: cārucandrakalādharā ends in -dharā, from √dhṛ, to hold or wear, and the a of kalā fuses with the a of dhara in the ordinary way. Dharā is an agent form, not a participle, so the name says she is a wearer of the crescent rather than that a crescent has been placed on her. The difference is small and it is the difference between an ornament and a burden.

What to hold while chanting it: the verse hands you a transmission and then a face. If you are using it as a contemplation on its own, the place to rest is the third name — not the moon in the sky but the middle of it, the part that neither waxes nor wanes and that nobody has ever seen.