ശ്രീദുര്ഗാ ഷോഡശനാമസ്തോത്രമ് (16 Names of Durga)

Sixteen names of the Goddess, set in the Prakriti Khanda of the Brahmavaivarta Purana, where the listener asks to hear the Durga narrative after every other account has been told. The names are given in two verses — Durga, Narayani, Ishana, Vishnumaya, Shiva, Sati, Nitya, Satya, Bhagavati, Sharvani, Sarvamangala, Ambika, Vaishnavi, Gauri, Parvati, Sanatani — and are said to be those declared in the Kauthuma recension, auspicious for all who hear them. The closing verse is a further question rather than an answer: it asks the best of the knowers of the Veda to explain what each of the sixteen means. What the text preserves, then, is the frame in which the sixteen names were expounded rather than the exposition itself.