The five acts, and the last of them is grace

Everyone knows three of the five. Making, keeping and unmaking are common property across Indian religion, and any tradition can assign them to a trio of gods. The distinctive contribution of the Śaiva systems, and the reason this verse matters, is the addition of two more.

Tirodhāna is concealment, and the word is built out of tiras, across or aside, and √dhā, to place: to put something across, to draw a curtain over. What is concealed is her own nature. The doctrine is that a world containing separate beings who take themselves to be separate cannot exist unless the underlying identity is hidden, and that the hiding is therefore not a failure of the system but a positive act performed deliberately, the fourth thing she does. This is why the name for the agent of that act is Īśvarī, the ruler: it takes power to keep the truth about a thing out of that thing's view. Set beside dharmādharmavivarjitā two verses back, the name is quietly unsettling. The condition that makes moral life possible is one she installs.

Anugraha is the release of that curtain, and the word is anu plus √grah, a reaching after or taking hold of, used in ordinary Sanskrit for the favour a superior shows a dependent. The tradition is firm that it cannot be earned, since anything that could be earned would fall under merit, and merit has already been ruled out as a way of reaching her. That is why the stotra gives grace two names in a row: sadāśivā, where it is an unfailing disposition, and anugrahadā, where it is an act of giving. The verse takes care not to let grace be described as a payment.

The two acts are the same act in opposite directions, and the clearest statement of that anywhere is in the seventh chapter of the Bhagavad Gītā, where the veil is described as divine, as belonging to the speaker, and as impossible to cross — and then, in the second half of the same verse, as crossed by anyone who comes to him. The veiling and the unveiling are attributed to the same agent in the same breath, which is exactly the arrangement of the second line here.

The five acts also have a visual form, and if you have ever looked at a bronze Naṭarāja you have already been reading them. The drum in the upper right hand is emission. The open palm raised in reassurance is maintenance. The flame in the upper left is withdrawal. The foot planted on the crouching figure is concealment. The lifted foot is grace. The image is thus not a dance in general but this specific list, and Śaiva teachers have used it as a teaching diagram for a very long time. That the stotra placed the witness of that dance seven verses earlier and the list of what the dance does here is unlikely to be accidental.

One word in the last name repays looking up. Parāyaṇa is para, highest or furthest, plus ayana, a going: literally the furthest going, and by usage a final resort, a refuge, and then the thing a person is entirely taken up with. Pañcakṛtyaparāyaṇā therefore does not say she performs five duties. It says the five are what she is occupied with to the exclusion of everything else — which, given that the five between them account for the entire career of a universe, is a way of saying she has no private life.

Saṃhāriṇī opens the verse with an anusvāra, and this is a good place to think about what that mark actually is. The word is sam plus √hṛ, to draw together; the m of the prefix, standing before h, is written as the dot and pronounced as a nasal coloured by what follows, which here means a nasal resonance running into the h rather than a closed m. Do not shut the lips. Then the retroflex ṇ at the end, which is there because of the r earlier in the word — a rule that also gives you the ṇ in rūpiṇī, kartrī's neighbours, and half the names in this hymn.

The third name in the first line contains the single most useful sandhi in this verse, and reciters who do not know it lose a name. Tirodhānakarī ends in a long ī. Īśvarī begins with a long ī. Two long ī sounds fuse into one, so what is printed and chanted is tirodhānakarīśvarī, a single unbroken word — but there are two names inside it, and the nāmāvalī separates them: tirodhānakaryai namaḥ, then īśvaryai namaḥ. If you have only ever chanted the stotra you may never have noticed that this is two names. Listen for the long ī in the middle and know that it is a seam.

The second line opens with the other kind of seam and this one is visible on the page. Sadāśivā ends in long ā and anugrahadā begins with short a; the short a is swallowed, and Devanagari marks its disappearance with the avagraha, the small hook printed as ऽ. So सदाशिवाऽनुग्रहदा is two names, sadāśivā and anugrahadā, and the hook is telling you that an a has been elided there. Wherever you meet that mark in this text, an initial a has gone missing.

Dhāna in tirodhāna is an aspirated dental — d, then breath, then the vowel — and never the sound of English "th". Rudrarūpā has the cluster dr and then a long ū. Pañcakṛtyaparāyaṇā gives you three things at once: the palatal nasal ñ before c, the syllabic ṛ in kṛ, and the cluster ty; and it ends with the retroflex ṇ, again triggered by the r earlier in the word.

Both lines are a clean eight and eight, with the caesura falling after rudrarūpā and after anugrahadā. That means the caesura in the second line falls between the fifth act and its summary, which is a natural place to breathe and also the right place: everything before it is the list, everything after it is the comment on the list.

What to hold while chanting. There is a temptation to hear the five acts as a job description and to chant them briskly. The verse resists that in its last word. Parāyaṇa is not what somebody does; it is what somebody is entirely taken up with. And the order is not neutral: withdrawal, then concealment, then grace. The list ends where you are, which is to say inside the fourth act, waiting on the fifth.