Three names in dha, three in vi: from grain in the store to the turning of the world

Dharmādhārā is a play on a single root that no translation preserves. Dharma is a noun of action from √dhṛ, to hold or uphold, and its oldest force is not "religion" or even "duty" but that which keeps things in place. Ādhāra is a noun from the same root with the prefix ā, and it means the support, the thing something rests on. The name therefore says that the upholding rests on her: she is the holder of what holds. The construction is a favourite in Sanskrit religious language because it makes an argument by morphology. Dharma is not self-supporting, however absolute its claims sound; take away what carries it and it falls, and what carries it is a person rather than a principle.

Adhyakṣa, in the second name, is a piece of administrative vocabulary rather than a religious title. It is adhi plus akṣa, eye — the one whose eye is over something — and it is the standard word for a government superintendent. The classical treatise on statecraft devotes an entire long book to the adhyakṣas, superintendents of the treasury, of mines, of weights, of the ports, of the granaries, each with a defined remit. To call her dhanādhyakṣā is to appoint her to an office, and it is an office that already had a well-known holder: Kubera, lord of wealth, whose whole identity is that he keeps the treasury. The name transfers the post without argument, which is how this hymn generally handles other deities.

Dhana and dhānya, money and grain, are an old formulaic pair, and they are what the ordinary blessing has always asked for. The verb is vi-√vṛdh, to cause to grow. There is nothing figurative here, and attempts to read it as spiritual increase strain the words; the hymn is willing to say plainly that people want a full box and a full barn and that she is who they ask. What keeps it from being merely transactional is the placement. The name comes immediately after dharmādhārā, so the increase is offered inside a frame in which right order is what her support is chiefly for.

Vipra is a more interesting word than "brahmin" suggests. The dictionaries derive it from √vip, to tremble or quiver, and the oldest sense is the inspired one — the poet or seer who shakes under the pressure of vision. By the period of this hymn it has become a plain synonym for brāhmaṇa, and the two names here have to be read at both levels. At the level of the etymology, viprapriyā says that the inspired are dear to her and viprarūpā that inspiration is a shape she takes, which is a claim about a function. At the level of ordinary usage, they say that brahmins are dear to her and that the brahmin is her form, which is a claim about a class of persons. The tradition has generally preferred to hear the first and has never given up the second, and the older warrant for the second is the Vedic image of the cosmic person out of whose mouth the brahmin came — a verse used for two millennia to make a social arrangement look like a description of the universe. A modern reader is entitled to find the second claim harder than the first; what is not defensible is pretending that only the first is present in the text.

These names also have a history of use. As with the sacrifice names of the previous verse, they helped this hymn travel. A Śākta text that honours the brahmin and calls him the goddess's own form could be adopted by orthodox households in the South that would have refused the tantric literature standing behind it, and the adoption is a large part of why the Lalitā Sahasranāma is the most widely recited Śākta text in India while its parent tradition remains comparatively specialised.

The last name changes everything about the scale. Bhramaṇa is from √bhram, and the root covers wandering, whirling, and going astray in the sense of error — bhrama is both a spinning motion and a delusion. The name says she causes the universe to whirl, and the root leaves it deliberately unclear whether the whirling is the majestic revolution of the spheres or the confusion of creatures who cannot stand still. The Gītā, describing the same thing, adds the machine: beings are mounted on a contrivance and spun by it. Placed at the end of a verse about grain and wealth, the name reminds the person asking for prosperity what kind of motion the prosperity is embedded in.

The first line is a run of dh, and it is denser than it looks on the page: dharmādhārā dhanādhyakṣā dhanadhānyavivardhinī gives seven syllables beginning with the aspirated dental in the space of sixteen. Dh is one sound, not d followed by h — a dental stop released with a puff of voiced breath, the tongue tip against the back of the upper teeth throughout. English speakers who substitute a plain d lose the line's whole texture, and those who over-aspirate turn it into panting.

Dhanādhyakṣā adds two difficulties to that. The dhy in the middle is the aspirated dental plus the palatal glide, run together; and the kṣ is the velar stop plus the retroflex sibilant. Neither cluster should be broken by a vowel. Note the internal sandhi: dhana plus adhyakṣā, two short a's meeting to give a single long ā, and the same join produces dharmādhārā from dharma and ādhāra.

The two dhana- names sit next to each other and are the likeliest place in the verse to lose your footing, because dhanādhyakṣā and dhanadhānya begin identically. Keep them apart by their second element: eye over the wealth, then growth of the wealth.

In the second line the initial v is the Sanskrit labiodental, closer to English w after a consonant and to v at the start of a word; vipra and viśva both take it in the initial position. Viprapriyā and viprarūpā are another near-identical pair, differing only in their fifth syllable, and both contain the pra cluster with the light tapped r. Viśva begins with ś, the palatal sibilant, made with the tongue nearer the hard palate than English sh, and viśvabhramaṇakāriṇī then gives bhr — the voiced aspirated labial plus r — which is the hardest single cluster in the verse. Say bha with full voicing, then let the r follow as its own articulation, and only then speed it up.

Two retroflex ṇ's appear in that last name, in bhramaṇa and in kāriṇī, and both are there by the same rule that produced them in the verses just before: an r earlier in the word pulls a following n back.

The metre is regular, eight syllables to the quarter, with the break after dhanādhyakṣā. The verse rewards a steady tempo more than most, because both of its halves are lists of near-identical shapes and any hurry in one of them will swallow a name.

For archanā: dharmādhārāyai namaḥ, dhanādhyakṣāyai namaḥ, dhanadhānyavivardhinyai namaḥ, viprapriyāyai namaḥ, viprarūpāyai namaḥ, viśvabhramaṇakāriṇyai namaḥ. Four ā-stems in -āyai and two ī-stems contracting to -inyai and -iṇyai. The two ī-stems are also the two longest names, which means the two hardest endings arrive when the breath is shortest; plan for it.

What the verse asks is that you make the request without apology and without stopping there. It is entirely proper, on this hymn's account, to ask her for money and grain. It is the last name that keeps the asking honest, by placing the storehouse inside something that is turning and will not stop turning because you have had a good year.