ശ്രീ ശാരദാ പഞ്ചരത്ന സ്തോത്രമ്

Five verses each closing on the same line — may the boon-giving goddess Śāradā, worshipped by Nārada, protect me — so the hymn is a repeated request rather than an argument. The five images are chosen to move from light to language to compassion: radiant as ten million suns rising at the beginning of the rains; the mother adorned with the ornament of the boundless world of poetry; soft as a new shoot, dark and unstained; destroyer of the delusion and grief of the whole undivided mass of the worlds; and Vāṇī the learned mother, who governs mind and intellect. The last of the five is the one that names what she actually does in this tradition, since Sarasvatī is asked for the control of thought rather than its ornament. Its closing verse promises the reciter the highest learning by her favour.