mātṛ pañcakam

Five verses that tradition places at the cremation of Shankaracharya's mother Aryamba, and the one work in which he writes as a son rather than as a teacher. He sets aside first the unbearable pain of the birth, the wasting of the body and the year on a soiled bed, and says no son, however high he has risen, can repay even one of them. He remembers her coming to the gurukula and weeping aloud at the sight of him in the garb of an ascetic, until the whole gurukula wept with her. He confesses that he gave her no water at the end, no svadha offering, no taraka mantra at her ear. To the mouth that called him pearl and eye and king he can offer only a dry grain of rice; and because in her labour she cried out Amba, Tata, Shiva, Krishna, Govinda, Hari, Mukunda, he folds his hands to her.