ଶ୍ରୀ ଦତ୍ତ ଭାଵସୁଧାରସ ସ୍ତୋତ୍ରମ୍

A hundred and ten verses by Vāsudevānanda Sarasvatī, and the most personal writing in this group. It begins in ordinary praise and then stops praising: I say it plainly before you, I am a heap of faults, and my faults are past counting as the drops in a shower of dust; of the worst of sinners I am the chief, and of the compassionate you are the first. From roughly its hundredth verse the poem becomes a record of places rather than of feeling, and the refrain turns to 'Śrī Datta is my refuge' — the grain given to the śūdra, the eight sacred waters shown to devotees on the Bhīmarathī at Gāṇagāpura, the kingdom restored, the smallpox lifted, sight given to the foreigner. One late verse sets out the day as an itinerary across the country: sleep at Māhur, the seat on the Sahya ridge, bath at Kāśī, alms at Kolhāpur, the meal in Pāñcāla, and at Kurupura the evening rinse.