brahmāṇī cālīsā

A Hindi chalisa to Brahmani, the power of Brahma and first of the seven Mothers, and it keeps two identities running side by side without choosing. In one she is Sharada — the vina and the book in her hands, the swan for a mount, the four Vedas and the six shastras her subject, and Shiva and Brahma unable to reach her end. In the other she is the fighting goddess, who takes weapons in hand whenever wrong grows heavy, destroyer of wrong, who does not delay when dharma is the reason. Between them the verses place her rising in the churning of the ocean of milk and being counted among the fourteen jewels. The name it uses for her in its refrains is the local one, the mother of the veil, by which she is known at her own shrine.