The hymn and its recitation

Anuṣṭubh is the metre in which this hymn is set: a verse of four quarters (pādas) of eight syllables each, written as two lines of sixteen, thirty-two syllables in all. The nyāsa names it twice, chandō’nuṣṭup (ny-1) and anuṣṭup chandaḥ (ny-4), and the first of the two is itself a verse in that metre.

The first śloka shows how it is built. Its first line is two quarters, viśvaṃ viṣṇurvaṣaṭkārō and bhūtabhavyabhavatprabhuḥ, and its second line two more, bhūtakṛd bhūtabhṛdbhāvō and bhūtātmā bhūtabhāvanaḥ; each has eight syllables, as the table shows. In the usual form the fifth syllable of a quarter is short and the sixth long, and the seventh is long in the first and third quarters and short in the second and fourth. The first and third quarters of the verse, the openings of its two lines, sometimes take other shapes, as epic verse allows.

Anuṣṭubh is a Vēdic metre, the third of the seven chief ones, and in the Vēdas it is looser, held chiefly by the count of syllables with only a general leaning in its cadence. The classical śloka is the Anuṣṭubh as the epic and later poets shaped it, with the long and the short fixed as well, and it is the verse of the Mahābhārata, the Rāmāyaṇa and the Purāṇas.

The deity (dēvatā) of a mantra is the one it addresses and praises, the one to whom the recitation is offered. The nyāsa names the deity of this hymn in two places. The first verse calls Him the Lord, the son of Dēvakī (ny-1), which is Kṛṣṇa; the fuller declaration names Him three ways at once, as Śrī Mahāviṣṇu, as the Supreme Self and as Śrīman Nārāyaṇa (ny-4).

The Śrīvaiṣṇava teachers hear no division in these names. They are the one Lord: Viṣṇu the great pervader, the Supreme Self within all, Nārāyaṇa the home of every being, and He who was born as Dēvakī's son. Śrīman, 'He who has Śrī', holds the Goddess in the name itself, for the tradition does not think of the Lord apart from Her.

The word answers the first of Yudhiṣṭhira's questions, kimēkaṃ daivataṃ lōkē, 'who is the one God of the world?' (pv-2). The nyāsa gives the answer in the form of a recitation: the deity of the thousand names is the One of whom the question asks. In the hymn He is also the Great God, mahādēvaḥ, the Supreme Deity (name 495).

Dhyāna is meditation, steady thought held on one thing, and here the thing is a picture of the Lord. A dhyāna verse describes Him, with His dress, ornaments, seat, weapons and companions, so that the reciter has Someone before the mind's eye when the names begin. In the nyāsa the meditation is one of the parts of the mantra, named as Śrī Viśvarūpa, the Lord whose form is the All (ny-7).

The nine units set before the names give the pictures in turn. The Lord is seen on the shore of the Milk Ocean, seated on strung pearls, with white clouds raining nectar above Him (dh-1); then the whole world is His body, the earth His feet, the sky His navel, the sun and moon His eyes (dh-2). Between the pictures stand the mantra of Vāsudēva and a bow (dh-3, dh-6). The others show the peaceful One who lies on the serpent with the lotus at His navel (dh-4), the cloud-dark One with the Śrīvatsa and the Kaustubha (dh-5), the four-armed One with the conch and the discus (dh-7), and at last Kṛṣṇa on a golden throne under the pārijāta tree, with Rukmiṇī and Satyabhāmā (dh-8, dh-9). The second picture, which draws the world as His body, is perhaps the form that the name Viśvarūpa, 'whose form is the All', brings to mind.

A mantra is a sacred word, verse or formula that is recited, sung or murmured. The word is made of man, 'to think', and an ending that makes a tool, so that a mantra is an instrument of thought; and the tradition also hears in it a protector, that which saves (trāyatē) the one who reflects (manana) on it. The Vēdas call their verses, their sacrificial formulas and their chants mantras alike.

A mantra is not said at random. It is recited knowing its parts: the seer who saw it, the metre it is set in, the deity it addresses, its seed, its power and the pin that fastens it. The nyāsa calls this hymn a great mantra, mahāmantra (ny-4), and sets out each of its parts before the first name is said.

In the hymn itself the Lord is the mantra: He is mantraḥ, the sacred formula that guards whoever dwells on His name (name 283). The nyāsa also gives the title of supreme mantra, paramō mantraḥ, to three of His names, udbhavaḥ, kṣōbhaṇaḥ and dēvaḥ (names 377 to 379), as one limb of the recitation (ny-5).

A metre (chandas) is the fixed measure a verse keeps: how many syllables stand in each quarter of it and, in later poetry, which of them are long and which short. The Vēdic tradition counts seven chief metres, named in the table below, and the poets who came after added hundreds more. So the answer to 'how many' is seven for the Vēdas, and very many for all Sanskrit verse.

In the Vēdas a metre is known by the number of its quarters (pādas) and the syllables in each. The seven chief ones run from the Gāyatrī, three quarters of eight syllables and the metre in which the well-known Gāyatrī mantra is set, to the Jagatī, four quarters of twelve. Each has several varieties, and the table gives the commonest form of each. The Vēdas name longer metres too, up to twenty-six syllables to the quarter, but these are far less used.

Later Sanskrit poetry has many more. Its treatises group metres by the syllables in a quarter, from one to twenty-six, and fix not only the count but the order of long and short, so that several hundred are named, some eight hundred and fifty by one reckoning. The study of metre is also one of the six limbs of Vēdic learning.

This hymn is in Anuṣṭubh, the third of the seven: four quarters of eight syllables, thirty-two in all. In the epics this metre is called the śloka, and the hymn's thousand names are set in 107 ślokas. The nyāsa names the metre before the first name is said: chandō’nuṣṭup, 'the metre is Anuṣṭubh' (ny-1).

Nāmāvaḻi means a row of names (nāma, name; āvali, a row). It is the list in which each name of the hymn is offered on its own: ōṃ, then the name in the dative, then namaḥ, as in ōṃ viśvāya namaḥ, 'Ōṃ, obeisance to the All'. Where the stōtram strings the names into ślokas, joined by sandhi, the nāmāvaḻi sets each name free and gives it its own bow: it is the form in which the names are said when they are offered one at a time in worship, and the numbers beside the names on this site are the numbers of this list.

Because this list divides a few names more finely than the usual reckoning, it counts a little past a thousand. The names themselves are a thousand: the two great commentaries, though they divide a few differently from each other, both close the thousand at the same last name.

Nyāsa means 'placing'. In the rite of a mantra it is the setting of the mantra in its places: its parts are named one by one, and in the fuller rite the reciter also touches parts of the body as the mantra's words are said, so that the mantra is laid upon the one who will recite it. Here the nyāsa is the passage printed before the meditation verses, and it sets the hymn out as a great mantra before a single name is spoken.

It comes in two forms side by side. Two verses give the seer, the metre and the deity, then the seed, the power and the heart (ny-1, ny-2), and a verse of bowing to the Lord by His names follows (ny-3). Then the fuller declaration used when the recitation begins names every part in order: seer, metre and deity; seed, power, supreme mantra and pin; weapon, eye and armour; the source and the binding of the directions; the meditation; and last the use to which the recitation is put, which is the delight of Śrī Mahāviṣṇu (ny-4 to ny-7). Each part is set with names taken from the hymn itself.

The same word has a second life in the Śrīvaiṣṇava teaching, where nyāsa also means the laying down of oneself at the Lord's feet in surrender, another name for prapatti, as in the Nyāsa Daśaka of Vēdānta Dēśika. That is a different matter from the nyāsa of a recitation, though both grow from the sense of setting something down.

Namaḥ is a bow made in words. It comes from the root nam, 'to bend', and means the bending of oneself before one who is honoured; obeisance, salutation and homage are the English words for it. The one honoured stands in the dative, as in ōṃ viśvāya namaḥ, 'Ōṃ, obeisance to the All', which is how the first of the thousand names is offered in the list called the nāmāvaḻi. The invocations end in the same form, ōṃ namō viṣṇavē prabhaviṣṇavē (inv-7), and the meditation sets the mantra ōṃ namō bhagavatē vāsudēvāya between its pictures (dh-3).

The Śrīvaiṣṇava teachers hear one thing more in the word. Read as its two syllables, na and ma, it says that nothing is one's own, 'not mine': the one who bows gives up all thought of being self-ruled or of owning anything, and gives all to the Lord.

Ōṃ, written Om in English and called the praṇava, 'the fore-sound', is the sacred syllable with which a recitation of the Vēdas begins and ends. The tradition holds it to be the word that names the Lord.

This hymn keeps the custom throughout. Ōṃ stands at the head of the first śloka, before each name in the list of offerings, in the last of the invocations (inv-7), at the head of the mantra of Vāsudēva in the meditation (dh-3), and at the close, where the last words are sealed with ōṃ nama iti (ph-23). The hymn also names the Lord as the syllable: He is tāraḥ, the saving ōṃ that carries the reciter across (name 341), and praṇavaḥ, the sacred sound itself (name 960).

The Śrīvaiṣṇava teachers hear in ōṃ three letters, a, u and m. The a is heard as the Lord who protects all; the u as the letter that shuts out every other tie, and some teachers hear in it Śrī, who is never apart from Him; the m as the soul that belongs to Him. So the one syllable speaks of the Lord, of the soul that is His and, as some hear it, of Śrī.

Phala is fruit and śruti is hearing, what is heard and told; the phalaśruti is the part of a hymn of praise that tells the fruits of reciting it. Many stōtrams end in one. In this hymn it is the twenty-two verses that close the chapter, and the tradition counts them part of the hymn and not an addition: both great commentaries explain them.

The promises are given plainly and generously. The first is the simplest: nothing inauspicious in this world or the next, for whoever hears the names or recites them each day (ph-2). Each of the four classes of men is named with a fruit of its own, learning, victory, wealth and happiness (ph-3), and those who seek dharma, wealth, desires or children are answered each in kind (ph-4). The verses go on to fame, fortune, fearlessness, health and strength; to freedom for the sick, the bound, the frightened and the afflicted (ph-8); and to a swift crossing of every hard place (ph-9). For the one who takes Vāsudēva as refuge and goal the promise is the highest: to be cleansed of every sin and go to the eternal Brahman, with no fear of birth, death, old age or sickness (ph-10, ph-11).

From the fourteenth verse the hymn turns from what the reciter gains to who the Lord is. The heavens and the earth are held up by His might (ph-14); the whole world lies under the sway of Kṛṣṇa (ph-15); the senses, mind and soul have Vāsudēva as their Self (ph-16); all things come from Nārāyaṇa, and every kind of knowing from Janārdana (ph-18, ph-19); and that Viṣṇu is the One, the great Being, while the beings are many and distinct, and that He pervades the three worlds as the Self of all (ph-20). The last verses invite whoever wishes for the good to recite the hymn, and promise that those who worship the Lotus-eyed Lord never come to ruin (ph-21, ph-22).

A kīlaka is a pin, a wedge or a bolt; in the nyāsa it is the part that fastens the mantra. It is named after the seed, the power and the supreme mantra, as the limb that holds the rest fast.

The nyāsa gives this hymn's pin as śaṅkhabhṛt, nandakī and cakrī: the Bearer of the conch, the Bearer of the Nandaka sword and the Bearer of the discus (ny-5; names 996 to 998). The three names stand together at the opening of the last śloka (s-107), so that the pin of the hymn is taken from the place where the hymn ends.

The power (śakti) of a mantra is the force by which it acts. It is named beside the seed: where the seed is the root of the mantra, the power is what the mantra can do. In the Śrīvaiṣṇava teaching śakti is also one of the six chief qualities of the Lord, His ability to bring about whatever He wills; the power of the nyāsa is a different thing, a limb of the recitation.

The nyāsa gives this hymn's power as dēvakīnandanaḥ and sraṣṭā, Dēvakī's son and delight, and the Creator (ny-2, ny-5). The two names stand together near the end of the hymn, in the 106th śloka (names 992 and 993). It is not the sage Śakti, Vasiṣṭha's son and Vyāsa's grandfather, whom the invocation names in honouring Vyāsa (inv-3); he has his own place on the People page.

Sahasranāma is sahasra, 'a thousand', and nāma, 'name'; stōtram is a hymn of praise. A sahasranāma is therefore a hymn built of a thousand names strung into verse, and this one is the hymn of the Lord Viṣṇu's thousand names that Bhīṣma tells Yudhiṣṭhira from the bed of arrows, in the Anuśāsana Parva of the Mahābhārata.

Bhīṣma gives it in answer to Yudhiṣṭhira's six questions: who is the one God of the world, what is the one refuge, and the rest. He calls the names gauṇāni, names that come from qualities (guṇa): each one tells something true of the Lord. The Śrīvaiṣṇava teachers, following Parāśara Bhaṭṭar, hear in each a quality of Śrīman Nārāyaṇa, with Śrī never apart from Him. The thousand are set in 107 ślokas, and the chapter closes with verses on the fruits of reciting them.

The number is a thousand. The list in which the names are offered one by one runs a little past a thousand, because it divides a few names more finely; and the two great commentaries, though they divide a few names differently from each other, both close the thousand at the same last name, the Lord who bears every kind of weapon.

In a mantra the seed (bīja) is the word that holds its power as a seed holds a tree: from it the rest is said to grow. In some mantras the seed is a single sounded syllable; in this hymn of a thousand names it is one of the names.

The nyāsa gives the hymn's seed as amṛtāṃśūdbhavaḥ and bhānuḥ (ny-2, ny-5): the Source of the moon, and the Radiant One (names 286 and 287). Amṛtāṃśu, 'the one with nectar-rays', is the moon, and the Lord is its source: both great commentaries refer the name to the moon that rose at the churning of the Milk Ocean, and a Vēdic verse says that it was born from the mind of the Person. Bhānu is the sun, and the name points past its disc to the One within it, by whose light the sun itself is said to shine. The word seed is met in the names in its plain sense too, where the Lord is the Seed of the universe, viśvarētāḥ (name 89), the root from which the world grows as a plant from its seed; that is the plant's seed, not the mantra's.

A seer, in Sanskrit ṛṣi, is the one who 'saw' a mantra. The tradition holds that the hymns of the Vēdas were seen rather than made: the ṛṣis beheld them in deep meditation and handed them on, so that a seer is the first receiver and teacher of a mantra more than its maker, and the old etymologist Yāska ties the word to the root for seeing. A mantra is therefore recited with its seer in mind, and the seer is the first part that the nyāsa names.

For this hymn the nyāsa names Vēdavyāsa as the seer of the thousand names and calls him a great sage, mahā muniḥ (ny-1). Seer and sage are near but not the same: a muni, 'sage', is one given to silent thought, a word linked with the root for thinking, while a ṛṣi is one who sees and receives the sacred word. In Vyāsa, the arranger of the Vēda and the maker of the Mahābhārata, the nyāsa joins both. Bhīṣma too says the names are those the seers have sung in full (ṛṣibhiḥ parigītāni, pv-13).

The hymn uses the word of the Lord as well. He is the Seer, kaviḥ (name 135), whose sight reaches beyond what the senses show, and the Great Seer, maharṣiḥ (name 537), by whose grace, the tradition holds, the seers beheld the Vēdas at all.

A śloka is a Sanskrit verse of two lines, each line made of two quarters of eight syllables, so that the whole has thirty-two. It is the common verse of the two epics and of the Purāṇas, and its metre is Anuṣṭubh. The word is old: in the Vēdas it means a call or a sound, then a song of praise, and in the end any verse or stanza.

In this hymn the thousand names are carried by 107 ślokas, from the first, which opens with the All (viśvaṃ), to the last, which closes on the Lord who bears every kind of weapon (sarvapraharaṇāyudhaḥ). A śloka of names is not a list: the names run into one another by sandhi, the joining of sounds, so that the reader divides them as the verse is read, and in the division followed here a śloka holds as few as seven names and as many as thirteen. They stand in a chapter of 142 verses, with thirteen of question and answer before them and twenty-two on the fruits of the names after.

Two limbs of the nyāsa are named together in its last unit (ny-7). Yōni, which means womb, is the source from which the mantra is said to spring; digbandha, the binding of the directions, is a ring of protection drawn round the reciter on every side.

For this hymn the source is the supreme Brahman who is bliss, ānandaṃ parabrahma, and bliss is also one of His names (ānandaḥ, name 532). The binding is made by three names that stand side by side in the 45th śloka: ṛtuḥ, sudarśanaḥ and kālaḥ, the Season, the One of auspicious sight, and Time (names 420 to 422). Sudarśana is also the name of the discus that the Lord bears, and the People page tells of it.

The nyāsa speaks of a mantra as if it were a person, with a heart, a weapon, an eye and a suit of armour. These are its limbs: hṛdaya the heart, astra the weapon, nētra the eye and kavaca the armour. Teachers of the rite count six limbs in all, adding the head and the tuft, and in the fuller rite the reciter touches the places on the body that belong to them as the mantra's words are said.

In the plain sense of the words, the weapon is what strikes away harm, the eye what keeps watch, the armour what guards the one who recites, and the heart the inmost part of the mantra. This hymn sets each with its own names. The heart is trisāmā, He who is hymned in the three Sāman chants (ny-2). The weapon is śārṅgadhanvā and gadādharaḥ, the Wielder of the Śārṅga bow and the Bearer of the mace; the eye is rathāṅgapāṇiḥ and akṣōbhyaḥ, He who holds the discus in His hand and the Unshaken; the armour is trisāmā, sāmagaḥ and sāma, three names of the Sāman (ny-6). All of them are His own names.