হিমালযরাজকৃত শৈলপুত্রীস্তুতিঃ

Himalaya, in whose house the Goddess has consented to be born as a daughter, asks to see her as she is rather than as his child. She answers almost in the words Krishna gives Arjuna — I give you divine sight, behold my sovereign form — and shows him three in succession: the five-faced, three-eyed Maheshvara form, serpent-girt and clothed in tiger skin, terrible as a thousand fires of dissolution; then the universal form, hands and feet and eyes on every side, bearing conch, discus, mace and lotus; then a gentle four-armed form dark as a blue lotus petal. Himalaya praises her as svaha and svadha, as offering and vow and sacrifice alike, and ends by calling his birth fulfilled, since the mother of the three worlds has come to him as a daughter.