Frequently Asked Questions
Most of what people write in to ask, answered here first.
Starting out
What is a stotra?
A Sanskrit hymn in praise of a deity, usually composed by a saint or a sage. They range from short eight-verse aṣṭakams to sahasranāmas that run to a thousand names. People recite them as prayer, and have done for a very long time.
Do I need to know Sanskrit to use this?
No. Plenty of people recite these texts without reading Sanskrit as a language — they read the syllables in a script they know and understand the sense from the translation. That's why every text we can convert appears in several scripts.
Which scripts can I read them in?
Devanāgarī is the original. Where a text has a Devanāgarī source we also publish it in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Assamese, Gujarati, Odia and Roman (IAST). Use the “Read in” row near the top of any stotra to switch. A few texts don't have a convertible source and appear only as published.
I only remember a line of it. Can I still find the stotra?
Usually, yes. Type the line into the search box the way you would say it. Search reads names, the other names a text goes by, and opening lines, and it forgives the usual differences of Roman spelling — aigiri or ayigiri, shiv or shiva. A line from the middle of a long text is harder to find that way: if nothing comes up, search for the name of the text it belongs to, or write to us and we will point you to it.
Or browse the library →Do I need initiation to recite these?
Generally not. Stotras are hymns of praise and are traditionally treated as open to anyone. Certain mantras are a different matter and are received through dīkṣā from a teacher. If you follow a guru or a sampradāya, their instruction outranks anything on this site.
Is there a right time or a right way to chant?
There's no single rule. Many people recite in the morning after bathing, aloud or under the breath, once or a set number of times. Some texts carry their own traditional instructions, and where a text says something about its own use we keep that. Otherwise, do what your practice or your family does.
What if I mispronounce something?
Recite anyway. Pronunciation is worth working at and worth learning properly if you can, but hesitancy helps nobody. Reading along with someone who recites well is the fastest way to improve.
The texts
Where do the texts come from?
From established public-domain repositories of classical Sanskrit literature. We don't rewrite, shorten or modernise the verses. What we do change is presentation — verse breaks, headings and spacing — so that a text reads cleanly on a screen.
The version here isn't the one I recite. Is one of them wrong?
Often neither. These texts moved through different regions and lineages for centuries before being written down, and more than one reading survives for many of them. We publish what our source gives. If yours differs, do tell us — knowing which variants are actually in use is genuinely useful to us, even when nothing needs correcting.
What's the difference between a stotra, a mantra, a sahasranāma and a nāmāvali?
Roughly: a stotra praises, a mantra is a formula recited for its own sake, a sahasranāma is a thousand names of a deity strung together as verse, and a nāmāvali is a list of names each recited with an invocation. The boundaries blur in practice and always have.
Are the transliterations reliable?
The conversion between scripts is mechanical — a rule-based mapping, letter by letter, with no interpretation involved. That makes it consistent, and it makes any error findable and fixable outright. If a word looks wrong in your script, that's worth reporting; it usually means a rule needs a fix, which corrects every text at once.
Is a Sanskrit stotra in Telugu script the same as a Telugu stotra?
No, and the site keeps the two apart. The “Read in” row shows a Sanskrit text in Telugu, Tamil or another script, letter for letter; it is still Sanskrit. Texts composed in a regional language — Hindi chalisas and aartis, Marathi abhangas and granthas, Tamil and Telugu devotional poetry — sit on language shelves of their own.
The language shelves →
Meanings and mistakes
Are the English translations accurate?
They're there to help you follow the verse, not to settle it. They're drafted with machine assistance and checked by people against the Sanskrit, which catches a lot and misses some. Devotional Sanskrit is dense and a compound can often be read more than one defensible way, so take a translation here as a guide rather than a ruling.
Why do some stotras have no meaning at all?
Because we haven't written one yet. There are more texts than there are hours, and adding a meaning we haven't checked would be worse than leaving the space empty. It gets filled in over time, and texts people ask about tend to get filled in sooner.
Which texts have a word-by-word meaning?
The ones on the Word by word shelf. On those, every word of every verse is separated out, transliterated and glossed, including the pieces inside a compound, and each text opens straight at that depth. The shelf grows as texts are finished.
Open the Word by word shelf →I've found a mistake. What should I do?
Tell us. The report form on the Contact page asks which stotra, which script you were reading, and what's wrong — a verse number and the line as it appears is plenty to start with. If you know what it should say, and what you're going by, that helps more still.
What happens after I report something?
A person reads it. Corrections to the Sanskrit get checked against the source we published from before anything changes, which is slower than simply taking your word for it but keeps us honest with the next reader too. Corrections to a meaning usually take longer, because there's often a case on both sides. Nothing gets thrown away.
Helping out
Can I help?
Yes, and a lot of what's good here exists because someone did. There's no minimum commitment and no interview — the volunteer form on the Contact page asks what you can read, what you'd enjoy working on, and how much time you honestly have.
What kind of help is actually useful?
Proofreading Sanskrit against a printed edition. Checking transliteration in a script you read natively. Writing or improving English meanings. Word-by-word glosses and grammar notes. Recording recitation. Sorting texts under the right deity. Adding stotras that aren't here. Some of it needs Sanskrit and a fair amount of it doesn't.
Can I ask for a stotra that isn't here?
Please do. The gaps we know about get filled first, and the ones nobody mentions can sit there for a very long time. If you can point us at a text you trust — a book, a temple's paddhati, a recording — that speeds things up considerably.
Practical
Is it free?
Yes. No account, no subscription, no paywall, and none planned. These texts aren't ours to sell.
Can I reuse the texts elsewhere?
The Sanskrit is public domain — use it freely. The English meanings, notes and the way things are arranged here took work, so if you want to reuse those, ask us first. We generally say yes, and we appreciate a credit and a link.
Does it work offline?
Largely, yes. The site can be installed to a home screen and keeps pages you've already opened available without a connection, and search keeps working too — useful in a temple, on a train, or anywhere the signal gives out mid-recitation.
Can I jump to a particular verse in a long text?
Yes. Any text longer than sixty verses has a Go to verse box beside the reading controls, and a row of ranges above the verses to move a hundred at a time. Every verse has its own address too, so a link can open a text at the verse you mean.
Is there audio?
Not yet. It's one of the things we'd most like to add, and it's one of the things volunteers ask about most often. If you recite well and would record, we'd be glad to hear from you.
What do you do with my data?
There's nothing to log into, so there's no account to collect. We use standard web analytics to see which pages get read, and your browser stores a couple of reading preferences on your own device. The Privacy Policy sets out the detail.
Still stuck, or spotted something wrong in a text?
Write to us