śrī śāradā cālīsā

The Chālīsā of Śāradā as she is worshipped at Maihar, and the shrine rather than the goddess in the abstract is its subject from the first line: the self-arisen image of Śāradā, come and seated at Maihar, holding the rosary and the book, with the vīṇā resting in her hand. The forty couplets that follow open on the acclamation jaya jaya jaya Śāradā mahārānī and call her the primal power and the welfare of the world, four-armed and renowned through the three worlds. One of them dates the shrine in the manner such texts do, saying that by reckoning it was some two thousand years ago that Śārada became manifest and the world came to know it. Its closing dohā asks for the two things the goddess of learning is asked for — devotion and knowledge — and that all ignorance be driven off and she dwell always in the house of the heart.