aṭṭālasundarāṣṭakam

Eight verses to Sundareshvara of Madurai, from the Halasya Mahatmya — the sthala purana of that temple — and given by its colophon to the Pandya king Vikrama. Every verse alliterates relentlessly on the letter ka and closes on the same line, I contemplate the beautiful one of the watchtower. The first has his lovely arm adorned with the bow made of the mountain of welfare, and says he has swallowed the round of becoming as a mouthful. The second is the drinking of the poison: his throat stained by the spreading light of the halahala, wearer of the digit, crowned with the digit of the moon. The alliteration is not decoration here but the temple's own regional style of praise, and it is why the hymn cannot be translated without losing half of itself.