ଶ୍ରୀ ସୋମସୁନ୍ଦରାଷ୍ଟକମ୍

Verses to Shiva as Somasundara, the beautiful one at Madurai, each closing on the same line: him, Somasundara, I salute. It is more Vedantic than most temple hymns. He is the one brahman without a second, complete, higher than the high and lower than the low, as the Vedas sing him; he is the shape of knower and knowing and known at once, pervading everything and yet seen by nobody. Two verses turn to particular worshippers rather than to doctrine, and both are the temple's own stories: Mrikandu's son, who by worshipping him became deathless on the spot, and Lakshmi's husband, who obtained the discus by completing a worship with his own eye when a lotus was wanting. The last verses come back to the general claim, that there is nothing beyond him and nothing short of him, and that the four Vedas take bodies in order to bow.