Mother of everything, and free of every colour

The two words for world in the first line are not interchangeable and the hymn is using both deliberately. Viśva is the older and flatter of them: all, entire, the whole of a thing, and by extension the universe considered as a total. Jagat is a participle. It comes from √gam, to go, in a reduplicated form, and its literal sense is the going, the moving — the world named by the fact that it does not stand still, and by ordinary extension the world of living beings as opposed to the fixed and inanimate. So viśvamātā claims maternity of everything whatever, and jagaddhātrī claims custody of what moves. Dhātrī, from √dhā, to place, set, hold, has the same double reach: it is the cosmic term for what upholds, and it is also the everyday word for a wet-nurse. The compound thus says at once that she keeps the world in existence and that she feeds it.

Jagaddhātrī later became a goddess in her own right rather than an epithet. In Bengal she has an established autumn festival of her own, celebrated with particular grandeur at Chandannagar and Krishnanagar, with an iconography — lion mount, four arms — distinct from Durgā's. Nothing in this hymn refers to that cult, which is later and regional, but a reader who has met the name in that context should know that its appearance here is the older, general use.

Viśālākṣī is likewise both epithet and proper name. Long, wide eyes are the standard mark of beauty in Sanskrit description, where the eye is conventionally said to reach nearly to the ear and is compared to a lotus petal or a fish; the epithet is applied to human heroines constantly. It is also the name under which the goddess is worshipped at Vārāṇasī, in a temple counted among the seats where a part of Satī's body is said to have fallen. Whether the hymn intends the temple or the description, the effect within the verse is a sudden shift of scale: two names of cosmic maternity, then a face.

Virāgiṇī repays slowing down, because the English word dispassion loses what the Sanskrit is doing. Rāga is a noun from √rañj, to be dyed or coloured. Its first sense is colouring; passion is the derived sense, on the metaphor of a mind taking a dye from its object. The same word names a mode in music, a mood that colours the hearer. Vi- negates, so virāga is the state of being uncoloured, and virāgiṇī, with the possessive suffix, is she who has that state. Placed directly after a name about the appearance of her eyes and directly before a run of names about delight and generosity, it prevents both readings from going too far. She is looked at and is not thereby something that takes a tint from being looked at.

The second line is drawn from the vocabulary of persons rather than principles. Pragalbhā means confident, mature, capable of speaking up; in the classification of heroines used by the Sanskrit dramatists and rhetoricians it is a technical term, naming the woman who is past the hesitancy of the mugdhā and knows exactly what she is doing. The hymn has used this register before, in vidagdhā some verses earlier, and the two names belong to the same world of courtly aesthetic judgement. Paramodārā and parāmodā are then a deliberate pair, differing only in where the long vowel falls: parama plus udāra, supremely generous, and para plus āmoda, of the highest gladness. Udāra means noble and exalted before it means open-handed; āmoda means gladness and also diffusive fragrance, the scent that fills a room without being carried, and the second sense is why the tradition likes the name — her joy propagates on its own.

Manomayī closes the verse with a term straight out of the Upaniṣads. The Taittirīya's second section builds the well-known series of sheaths, each inner one described as the self of the one outside it, and the manomaya, made of mind, is the third of them. The suffix -maya means consisting of, made out of, as in hiraṇmaya, made of gold. The commentators generally read the name in two directions at once: she is what the mental sheath is made of, and she is the mind of every being who has one. Taken with the first name of the verse, the effect is a closed circuit — the mother of everything is the substance of the thought that is at this moment considering her.

Both halves of the first line are four and four; the second line runs three and five, then four and four. Pragalbhā is the only short name in the verse and it wants to be hurried. Give its three syllables their weight and the second line will keep its shape.

The most instructive sound in the verse is the join in jagaddhātrī. The elements are jagat and dhātrī, and a final t before a voiced aspirate becomes voiced: t plus dh gives ddh. What is written and said is a doubled dental with the aspiration on the second half — hold the tongue at the teeth for a full beat, then release with breath into the ā. Reciters commonly produce a single d with an h after it, which loses the length the metre needs.

Viśālākṣī contains kṣ, the cluster that gives learners the most trouble in the whole language. It is a velar k followed immediately by the retroflex sibilant ṣ, the tongue moving from the soft palate to the curled-back position without a vowel between. It is not the English x of "axe", and it is not the sh of "shy". The two ś sounds of the verse — in viśvamātā and viśālākṣī — are the palatal sibilant, made with the blade of the tongue against the hard palate, and are distinct from that retroflex ṣ; the verse gives you both within four syllables of each other, which makes it a useful drill.

Paramodārā and parāmodā are the trap. Both are five and four syllables of the same three sounds in nearly the same order, and both hide a vowel-sandhi: parama plus udāra gives o where the a and u meet, para plus āmoda gives a long ā where a meets ā. Say them slowly as pa-ra-mo-dā-rā and pa-rā-mo-dā and note that the long vowel arrives one syllable earlier in the second. Under speed, reciters produce one of these twice and drop the other, and because the names are adjacent the ear does not catch it.

Manomayī is manas plus mayī, with the final s of manas becoming o before a voiced sound; the same change produces manoratha, manohara and a hundred other familiar compounds. Knowing it means you will never be tempted to look for a word mano.

In archanā the datives are viśvamātre — an ṛ-stem, so not -yai but -re, and the commonest error in the verse — then jagaddhātryai, viśālākṣyai, virāgiṇyai, pragalbhāyai, paramodārāyai, parāmodāyai and manomayyai. The last doubles the y before the ending.

What the verse asks of the reciter is chiefly attention to its swerve. It moves from the largest claim available in the language to a description of a face, then to a denial that she takes colour from anything, then to the vocabulary of poise and generosity, and then to the announcement that the mind doing all this looking is hers. Chanted at speed the sequence passes as a list of compliments. Chanted at the pace the metre actually wants, it is an argument.