kālabhairava sahasranāma stotram

The thousand names of Kālabhairava from the Uḍḍāmara Tantra, set as a conversation between Umā and Maheśvara on the peak of Kailāsa. Pārvatī's question is unusually specific and unusually social: she asks on behalf of people ground down by misfortune, sorrow and poverty, and wants what will bring wealth and grain and ease, particularly for those caught in trouble with kings. Śiva answers first with a shorter king of hymns, then with the thousand. The record keeps the full apparatus between the two — the viniyoga, and a placing of the god limb by limb in which Bhairava is set on the head, the terrible-to-look-at on the forehead, the slayer of spirits on the eyes, the dog-followed on the brows, the lord of beings on the ears and the ghost-borne on the cheeks. The names themselves open on the bhūta series: lord of beings, self of beings, their maker and their dwelling.