citragupta cālīsā

A Hindi chalisa to Chitragupta, who keeps the record of what everyone has done, and it opens with the reason he exists. Brahma had made the world and made human beings, and human conduct left him without an answer — so Chitragupta appeared as his help, to make the difference between right and wrong knowable. He is addressed as an ocean of the jewels of knowledge and as the lord of Yama's court, and the chalisa is unusually interested in his office rather than his person: the writing, the reckoning, and the fact that nothing escapes it. It belongs to the Kayastha communities who take him as their ancestor, and its observance is fixed to the second day after Diwali, when pen and ink and account books are worshipped rather than put to use.