Shiv Mahimna Stotra

Meaning:O Hara! If praise from one who does not truly know your greatness is unfitting, then even the words of Brahma and the gods fall short of you. And if all who praise you can only do so to the limit of their own understanding, then this effort of mine at a hymn is free of blame.

Meaning:Your greatness is beyond the reach of speech and mind; even the Veda, trembling, describes it only by turning away — 'not this, not this'. Who can praise that greatness? With how many qualities, and as whose object? Yet whose mind and speech do not turn to your later, manifest form?

Meaning:O Brahman, you who fashioned the honey-sweet, supremely nectar-like speech of the Vedas — can even the words of Brihaspati, the guru of the gods, cause you any wonder? O Destroyer of the Three Cities, my mind has resolved upon this: that by the merit of telling your virtues I shall purify my own speech.

Meaning:Your divine power creates, protects and dissolves the universe; the Vedas declare it, divided across the three bodies that differ by the three gunas. Yet, O Giver of Boons, certain dull minds in this world raise mocking arguments against it — delightful to the impious, but ruinous.

Meaning:What desire moves him, what body has he, what plan, what support, what materials — how does the Creator fashion the three worlds? Such crooked quibbling against you, whose lordship is beyond the reach of reasoning, makes the witless noisy and serves only to delude the world.

Meaning:Can whole worlds be without birth, O Best of the Immortals, though they have parts? Can the creation of the universe come about without a Lord presiding? Who but you could undertake the making of the worlds? — and yet the dull-witted raise their doubts about you.

Meaning:The three Vedas, Sankhya, Yoga, the Pashupata way, the Vaishnava way — in all these differing paths, men say 'this is best, that is fitting'. But as the ocean is for all waters, you alone are the goal of all who travel the straight and the winding ways, each by his own taste.

Meaning:The great bull, the cot-leg club, the axe, the hide, the ashes, the serpents, the skull — these, O Boon-giver, are the whole apparatus of your household; yet the gods enjoy all their riches at a mere lift of your brow. Truly, the mirage of sense-objects cannot bewilder one who revels in the Self.

Meaning:One declares all this eternal; another, transient; a third holds the world both enduring and passing, its aspects mixed. Bewildered, as it were, by these contradictions, O Destroyer of the Cities, I yet praise you unabashed — ah, surely my talkativeness is impudence!

Meaning:Brahma above and Hari below strove with all effort to measure your form when you stood as a pillar of fire; and when, with faith and devotion heavy in their praise, they hymned you, O Girisha, you revealed yourself to them of your own accord. Does devoted service to you not bear fruit?

Meaning:That the ten-headed Ravana made the three worlds free of rivals without effort, his arms itching restlessly for battle — this was the flowering of his steadfast devotion to you, O Destroyer of the Cities: he had offered the row of his lotus-heads as lotuses at your feet.

Meaning:But when that same Ravana, his arms grown mighty by serving you, stretched their strength against your own abode Kailasa, you barely stirred the tip of a toe — and he found no resting place even in the netherworld. Truly, when puffed up by power, the wicked are deluded.

Meaning:That Bana, who had the three worlds at his beck and call, brought even the towering wealth of Indra to nothing — what wonder in that, when he waited upon your feet? What head bowed to you, O Boon-giver, does not rise to greatness?

Meaning:When you, O Three-eyed One, in compassion for gods and demons terrified at the untimely ruin of the universe, drank the poison of the churning sea, the dark stain it left on your throat did not disfigure you — it became your glory. Even a blemish is admirable in one devoted to breaking the world's fear.

Meaning:The arrows of Kama, the god of love, never returned unfulfilled anywhere — among gods, demons or men, his shafts were ever victorious. But looking on you, O Lord, as just another god, he became a mere memory, his body burnt away. Insult to the self-mastered brings no good.

Meaning:The earth, struck suddenly by your feet, doubts its own survival; Vishnu's realm trembles as your club-like arms bruise the trains of planets; the heavens ache, their banks lashed by your loosened matted hair — see, the very dance you dance for the world's protection seems to work its opposite! Power, alas, is a troublesome thing.

Meaning:The celestial stream that pervades the sky, its rising foam made lovelier by the clustered stars, shows on your head as a mere droplet; and that same stream girdles the earth, making it an island in the ringed sea. From this alone may be measured how vast, how divine your body is.

Meaning:The earth your chariot, Brahma your charioteer, the great mountain your bow, sun and moon your chariot-wheels, Vishnu himself your arrow — what was this pomp of preparation to burn the three cities, mere straw before you? The Lord's thought does not depend on instruments; he was but playing with things that obey his will.

Meaning:Hari laid a thousand lotuses at your feet each day; one day, one flower short, he plucked out his own lotus-eye and offered it. That overflowing surge of devotion ripened into the discus in his hand, with which, O Destroyer of the Cities, he keeps watch over the three worlds.

Meaning:When the sacrifice sleeps, you remain awake to join the act to its fruit; if action perishes once performed, how could it bear fruit at all without worship of the Lord? Therefore, seeing in you the guarantor of the fruit of sacrifice, men place their faith in the Veda and gird themselves firmly to their rites.

Meaning:Daksha was skilled in ritual, lord of creatures, master of the sacrifice itself; the great rishis served as his priests, the hosts of gods sat in assembly — yet his rite, performed without faith in you, was wrecked by you, O Refuge-giver. Sacrifices that scorn the giver of their fruit destroy their own performers.

Meaning:When the Lord of Creatures, overcome by lust, pursued his own daughter — she fleeing in the form of a deer, he following in a stag's body — you, bow in hand, hunted him; pierced by your arrow he fled to the sky, and there, even today, he hangs trembling, never released from the fury of your hunter's chase.

Meaning:She herself saw Kama, bow drawn for conquest, burnt to straw in an instant before her eyes, O Destroyer of the Cities; if Devi, because she shares the ascetic's half of your body, still fancies you subject to her charms — ah, Boon-giver, how young women deceive themselves!

Meaning:Your sport is in the cremation grounds; your companions are the ghosts; your unguent is the ash of funeral pyres; your garland a string of human skulls — let your whole conduct, then, be called inauspicious! And yet, O Giver of Boons, to all who remember you, you are the supreme auspiciousness itself.

Meaning:The yogis who draw the breath inward, fix the mind in the heart and behold you there — their hair thrills with rapture, their eyes brim with tears of joy; plunging as into a lake of nectar, they taste an inner bliss beyond all telling. That truth within, O Lord, is verily you.

Meaning:You are the sun, you the moon, you the wind, you the fire; you the waters, you the ether, you the earth, and you the Self — so men speak, marking you out attribute by attribute. But as for us, we know of nothing whatsoever, here or anywhere, that you are not.

Meaning:The three Vedas, the three states of waking, dream and sleep, the three worlds, the three gods — the syllable OM names them all in its three letters a, u, m; and by its subtle resonance beyond them it embraces your fourth, transcendent abode. Thus, O Refuge-giver, the word OM declares you both in your parts and in your wholeness.

Meaning:Bhava, Sharva, Rudra, Pashupati, then Ugra, Sahamahan, Bhima and Ishana — over this, your eightfold name, even the Shruti lingers, pondering each in turn. To you, the beloved abode of these names, I offer my devoted salutation.

Meaning:Salutations to you, O lover of the forest dwellings, the nearest — and salutations to you, the farthest; salutations, O Destroyer of Kama, to the minutest of the minute — and to the mightiest of the mighty; salutations, O Three-eyed One, to the most ancient — and to the ever-youngest; salutations to you who are all — and beyond all, salutations again!

Meaning:Salutations again and again to Bhava, abounding in rajas, for the world's creation; salutations again and again to Hara, mighty in tamas, for its dissolution; salutations again and again to Mrida, rich in sattva, for the joy of living beings; salutations again and again to Shiva, the resplendent state beyond the three gunas.

Meaning:Where is this mind of mine — shrunken, ruled by affliction — and where your blazing excellence, ever overflowing every limit of quality? The thought made me tremble; yet devotion would not let me hold back, and so, O Giver of Boons, I have laid at your feet this offering of flowers made of words.

Meaning:Were the black mountain the ink and the ocean the inkwell, were a branch of the wish-granting tree the pen and the earth itself the page, and were Sharada, goddess of speech, to take them up and write for all eternity — even then, O Lord, the end of your virtues would not be reached.

Meaning:Thus has Pushpadanta, foremost of all the gandharva hosts, composed this lovely hymn in stately metres to the Lord whose crest bears the moon — the Ishvara worshipped by demons, gods and the best of sages, whose greatness is strung upon qualities though he himself is beyond all quality.

Meaning:The man who, pure in heart and with supreme devotion, daily recites this flawless hymn of Dhurjati (Shiva of the matted locks) — he attains hereafter the world of Shiva and becomes Shiva's equal; and in this world he is blessed with abundant wealth, long life, children and fame.

Meaning:There is no god beyond Mahesha; there is no hymn of praise beyond this Hymn of His Greatness; there is no mantra higher than Aghora (the name of Shiva); there is no truth beyond the Guru.

Meaning:Initiation, charity, austerity, pilgrimage, sacred knowledge, the performance of sacrifices and the rest — none of these is worth even a sixteenth part of the recitation of this Hymn of Greatness.

Meaning:Kusumadashana — Pushpadanta — king of all the gandharvas, was the servant of the God of gods whose crest bears the lovely crescent moon. Fallen from his own glory through the Lord's displeasure, he composed this divinely beautiful hymn of Shiva's greatness.

Meaning:If a man, with folded hands and undistracted mind, first worships the Teacher of the gods — the one cause of heaven and liberation — and then recites this unfailing hymn composed by Pushpadanta, he goes into the presence of Shiva, hymned on his way by the kinnaras.

Meaning:Here is completed this hymn of merit, spoken by the gandharva — incomparable, ravishing the heart, a description of the Lord of all in his entirety.

Meaning:Thus is this worship wrought of words laid at the feet of Shri Shankara. May Sadashiva, the Lord of the gods, be ever pleased with me.

Meaning:I do not know the truth of your being, O Maheshwara — of what nature you are. But whatever you are, O Mahadeva, to that very nature my salutations, again and again.

Meaning:The man who recites this hymn once, twice or thrice a day is freed from every sin and is honoured with glory in the world of Shiva.

Meaning:By this hymn — sprung from the lotus-mouth of Shri Pushpadanta, destroyer of sin, beloved of Hara — whether kept in the throat (learnt by heart) or recited with a collected mind, Mahesha, the Lord of all beings, is supremely pleased.