śrī śāradāṣṭakam (nārāyaṇa guru kṛta)

Eight verses to Śāradā by Nārāyaṇa Guru, the Kerala teacher and social reformer, and the philosophy is his own rather than the conventional one. The first verse makes her the pervading speech of which this world consists; the second calls her a wholly purifying art of the self, painted with the play of the sattva quality. The third is the one that carries his signature concern and is unusual in any hymn to Sarasvatī: goddess, I have no wish to travel the hard roads that issue out of the differences between doctrines — timidly I come to you as the highest goal. The fourth addresses her as the one whom yogins hunt for under another name, beautiful in her various transformations, and describes her as showing her strange play through sphoṭa, the burst by which meaning arrives. The last salutes her as Śāradā of Śivagiri, the hill on which he founded his own centre.