A queen in her own right, and bells at the waist

This verse opens one of the alliterative runs that give the middle of the stotra its shape. Sixteen consecutive names, all of this verse and all of the next, begin with r; then verses 73 and 74 turn to k, verse 75 to v, verse 76 to a solid block of kṣ, verse 77 back to v. The thousand names are not arranged alphabetically, and there is no acrostic to decode, but these runs are unmistakable once you notice them, and they are the sort of thing a text composed for memorisation and for recitation aloud does on purpose. A hundred names that share an initial sound are a hundred names that can be checked against each other while chanting.

The recension this site follows marks a section boundary immediately before this verse. It divides the thousand names into ten hundreds and labels each hundred with a digit of the sun — tāpinī for names 1 to 100, then dhūmrikā, marīcī, and jvālinī for 301 to 400, which is where this verse sits, running on through rucī, suṣumṇā, bhogadā, viśvā, bodhinī and dhāriṇī. Those are the second through the eleventh of the twelve solar kalās named in the Nārada Purāṇa and the Mahānirvāṇa Tantra. Jvālinī means the flaming one, and it is worth registering that a hundred named for a tongue of fire opens with sixteen names on r, the letter tantric lore treats as fire; Monier-Williams records vahni as a mystical name of r.

Rājarāja is a title rather than a person, and the dictionary gives three things it can mean: a supreme sovereign or emperor, Kubera the lord of wealth, and the moon. Commentators generally take Kubera here, which sharpens the name considerably: the richest being in the cosmos, the treasurer of the gods, is on the wrong side of the transaction. Note also the grammar. Arcitā is a past passive participle, so the name is not an action of hers; it describes what is done to her. This is the first of an unusually dense run of such names. Within the next fourteen verses she is worshipped by the guardians of holy ground, by ascetics who have burnt everything else away, by the god of desire in person, and by a rite performed behind closed doors — the whole range of who worships, from the wealthiest to the most renounced, with desire itself on the list.

Rājñī is a small grammatical event. It is the feminine formed directly from rājan, king, by the suffix that makes agent-nouns feminine, and Sanskrit had perfectly good alternatives — mahiṣī, the chief queen, or a compound in patnī, wife. The word chosen is the one for a woman who rules, and the Vedic hymn in which the goddess speaks in her own voice uses its exact synonym: ahaṃ rāṣṭrī, I am sovereignty. Read beside kāmeśvaraprāṇanāḍī fourteen verses further on, where she is the artery carrying her consort's life, the picture is consistent. She is not queen because she is married to a king.

Two of the pleasure-names repay a look at their roots. Rañjanī comes from √rañj, which means both to be dyed or reddened and to be delighted or charmed; the same root gives rāga, which is colour and passion and, later, a musical mode, and rakta, which is red and also in love. In Sanskrit the mind that is gladdened and the cloth that is dyed undergo the same verb, and in a hymn whose colour has been red since its first verse the pun is not accidental. Rasyā rests on rasa — sap, juice, taste, the essence of a thing, and in poetics the flavour a work leaves in the audience. Three rasa-names fall inside these fifteen verses: rasyā here, the ocean of the flavour of compassion two verses on, and brimful of the erotic flavour eleven verses after that.

Rājīva looks like another word built on rājan and is not. The dictionary's first sense for it is streaked or striped, and the same form names a striped deer, a crane, an elephant and a species of fish before it settles, in the neuter, on the blue lotus. The likeness to rājan is purely a matter of sound, which in a verse organised entirely by sound is the point. It is also worth knowing that rājīvalocana, lotus-eyed, is one of the standard epithets of Viṣṇu and of Rāma. Handing it to her, one name before handing her Lakṣmī's name outright in the next verse, is the same quiet annexation performed twice.

The last name is the only sound in the verse. Mekhalā is a girdle or belt, and the dictionary's principal entry is not ornamental at all: it is the ritual cord tied round an initiate at his investiture, of muñja grass for a brahmin. The same word covers a woman's jewelled belt and an ascetic's waist-cord. Raṇat is a present participle, ringing now, not rung; and this is the second time the hymn has described this belt. At name 38 it was ratnakiṅkiṇikāramyaraśanādāmabhūṣitā, adorned with a girdle-string lovely with jewelled bells — seen and not heard. Two hundred and seventy-four names later the same object is given back to us as noise.

The metre is anuṣṭubh throughout, eight syllables to the quarter, and the break falls cleanly between names: rājarājārcitā rājñī, then ramyā rājīvalocanā. The second line is four names, of which the last takes a full eight syllables to itself, so the rhythm of the verse is short-short-short-long in each half.

The first thing to fix is the r itself, because there are sixteen of them and nothing else in the verse will survive getting it wrong. The Sanskrit r is a single quick tap of the tongue-tip just behind the upper teeth. It is not the English r, which is made with the tongue bunched and the tip curled back and touching nothing, and a line of English r's turns this verse into mud. Say ra-ra-ra slowly with a visible tap, then run rājarājārcitā at half speed and listen for four distinct contacts.

Rājñī contains the conjunct jñ, written राज्ञी: the letter ja joined to the palatal nasal ña, with the long ī sign after. This is the single most regionally variable cluster in Sanskrit. Northern reciters generally say something like gy, Marathi speakers dnya, southern reciters an analytic j followed by ñ. The grammarians describe two palatal sounds in sequence, which is what the letters actually say, and that is the safest thing to teach your mouth; whichever you adopt, use the same one in kṛtajñā eleven verses later so that your text stays consistent with itself.

The verse is also a complete drill in nasal assimilation. Rañjanī has the palatal ñ before the palatal j; kiṅkiṇi has the guttural ṅ before k and then the retroflex ṇ; ramaṇī and raṇat have the retroflex ṇ. The rule underneath all of this is that a Sanskrit nasal takes the position of the stop that follows it, so the tongue never travels between the nasal and the consonant after it. In रञ्जनी it is already at the palate for the ñ and stays there for the ja; in किङ्किणि it is already at the soft palate for the ṅ and stays there for the ka. If you find yourself moving, you are inserting a sound that is not there.

Rasyā needs a clean dental s before the y — not the palatal ś, and not the English sh, which is where an unwary tongue drifts when a y follows. And keep the vowel lengths honest: the long ā of rāja- and rājīva- against the uniformly short a of ramaṇī and rañjanī. Ramyā is short then long; ramā in the very next verse is short then long as well, and rāmā, four names after that, is long-long.

One practical note for anyone using the nāmāvalī. The dative forms in this recension run rājarājārcitāyai, ramyāyai, rañjanyai, ramaṇyai, rasyāyai — and, for the queen, rājñai, where the ī-stem paradigm would lead you to expect rājñyai. Printed nāmāvalīs are not unanimous about forms like this, and it is worth checking against whichever book you actually use for archanā.

As for what to hold while chanting: the verse ends on a sound made by a moving body, which is also what chanting is. The last name comes closer than anything else in the stotra to describing what you are doing while you say it.