ശ്രീ വരാഹമുഖീ സ്തവഃ

A hymn to Varahi rather than to the Boar — the second verse addresses her by that name, and the first hails the boar-faced body of the mother of the worlds, dark as a blue lotus, half-clad in silk, bright with a crown, holding plough and pestle, tawny-eyed and slender at the waist. What follows states protection by describing its opposite: the enemies of those devoted to her stand with their movement stilled, their speech failing, their weapons fallen, their sight going dark. One verse asks how the earth could ever rise from the serpent-hole of Patala, overrun by the four oceans, without the tip of her curved tusk to lean on. Another is the verse the hymn is remembered for: what has even a poor and solitary man to fear in an empty forest at night, if your name is once upon his lips?