MAHIMNA STOTRA

THE PRAISE OF SHIVA’S GREATNESS INTRODUCTION Many stotras are chanted in praise of Lord Shiva, but He is most pleased with a particular stotra. The stotra is called ‘Shiv Mahimna Stotra’ or ‘Shiva Mahimna Stotram’. The Stotram is a favorite mantra of Shiva devotees and is considered one of the best among all Stotras (or Stutis) offered to Lord Shiva. The divine form of Shiva is described in this hymn of 43 verses in Sanskrit. According to tradition, this hymn has been composed by a Gandharva (celestial musician) named Pushpadanta. This hymn enumerates various merits and attributes of Lord Shiva. Pushpadanta was very good at music. He was the best singer of Indra’s sabha and also a devoted devotee of Lord Shiva. The legend about the circumstances leading to the composition of this Stotra is as follows: In ancient times, a king named Chitraratha, who was a great devotee of Lord Shiva, had constructed a nice royal garden. He used to pick flowers from that garden and worship Lord Shiva daily. One day Pushpadanta was passing by the garden of King Chitraratha. As he went in, he was fascinated by the flowers in the garden. He quickly took the flowers from there and worshiped his adoring deity Shiva. After that, King Chitraratha came to the garden and performed flowerless worship that day without finding a single flower. From then on it continued to be like this. The king tried very hard to capture the thief, but in vain, because the Gandharvas have divine power to remain invisible. Finally the king spread the sacred Shiva Nirmaalya in his garden. Shiva Nirmaalya consists of the Bilva leaves, flowers, which have been used in worshipping Lord Shiva. The Shiva Nirmaalya is considered holy. Pushhpadanta, not knowing this, stepped on the sacred Shiva Nirmaalya, and by that he incurred the wrath of Lord Shiva and lost the divine power of invisibility. He then designed a prayer to Lord Shiva for forgiveness. In this prayer he sung the greatness of the Lord. This very prayer became well known as the 'Shiva Mahimna Stotra'. Lord Shiva became pleased by this Stotra, and returned Pushhpadanta's divine powers. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa, went into samadhi just by reciting a few verses from this hymn. Let its recitation be beneficial to you as well! mahimnaḥ pāraṁ te paramaviduṣo yadyasadṛśī stutir brahmādīnām api tadavasan nāstvayi giraḥ athāvācyaḥ sarvaḥ svam atiparimāṇāv adhigṛṇan mamāpy eṣa stotre hara nirapavādaḥ parikaraḥ O Shiva, remover of all types of miseries, what wonder is there, if the prayer to you, chanted by one who is ignorant about your greatness, is worthless! Even the utterance of Brahma and other Gods is not able to fathom your merits. Hence, if persons with very limited intellect try to offer you a prayer, their attempt deserve your special favour. If it is so, I should not be an exception. Hence, I begin this prayer. MAHIMNA STOTRA translated into English by Dr W .NORMAN BROWN 1. If it is unseemly for one who does not comprehend the farthest limit of your greatness to give you praise, then the hymns to you of Brahma and the rest of the gods as well are idle. Since anyone praising your totality up to the limit of his intellectual development is subject to no reproach, then this venture of mine to intimate it in a hymn of praise, O Hara, is blameless. 2. Your greatness has passed beyond the range of speech and mind, that which even the Scripture describes in awe, using the method of excluding from the description that which it is not—Who can celebrate it? For whom with its manifold qualities is it an object of sense experience? Whose mind and speech do not halt at a point this side of it? 3. Though the mentor of gods (Brhaspati) has fashioned utterances packed with honey, supreme nectar, is even his speech a source of wonder to you, O Brahma (Shiva)? But that, through the merit of reciting your qualities, I may purify this voice of mine—on that object is my mine fixed, O crusher of the cities. 4. This sovereignty of yours, which produces the birth, preservation, and destruction of the universe, which is triply divided in to three bodies differentiated according to the gunas (with sattva, rajas, and tamas respectively embodied in Brahma, Vishnu, and Hara)—on it, O giver of gifts, do some whose intelligence is stultified here in this world cast disgusting contumely, delightful to the impious, trying to destroy it. 5. “Come now, having what wish, bearing what body, employing what tools does the creator create the three worlds; having what standing place, using what materials?” Though you exercise sovereignty transcending the scope of an inquiry, this inopportune and ill- founded sophistry leads some whose intellect is corrupt to chattering for the confusion of the world. 6. Can the worlds with their component parts be without a creator? Can the universe have a system of existence without yielding to a maker? What aggregate of material could operate with a lord to produce the cosmos? Wherefore these are men of small mind who have doubts concerning you, O best if the gods. 7. Since the way of religion is diverse, including the Triad of Vedas, the Samkhya, the Yoga, the doctrine of Pasupati, Vaisnavism, and one person considers this one best and another person that one suitable— Because of the variety of preferences, you are, for men who favour different paths, straight or winding, the single goal, as the ocean is of waters. 8. A mighty bull, a skull-capped club, an axe, a tiger’s skin, ashes, serpents and a skull—only so little, O granter of boons, is the paraphernalia for your way of life; But the gods possess each his own wealth entrusted to him by a movement of your eyebrow. For a mirage of sense-objects does not delude him (Shiva) whose delight is in his soul. 9. All is eternal, says one; another, this entire universe is impermanent; another proclaims that in this whole world both permanence exist with diverse spheres of operation. O crusher of the cities, though I am confused, as it were, by these various partisans, I am still not ashamed to praise you. Is not my babbling presumptuous? 10. When with all their might Virinca went upwards and Hari downwards to measure the majesty of you whose body was burst of flame, but went in vain, then, O Girisa, that which they were supremely praising full of bodily devotion and spiritual faith appeared before them of its own accord. Does not devotion to you bear fruit? 11 .The ten-headed Ravana reduced the three worlds without effort to a state where they no longer opposed him and still had his [twenty] arms dominated by itch for war, This because he had made an offering to your lotus feet consisting of [nine of] his heads like a row was a consequence of unwavering devotion to you, O destroyer of the three cities. 12. When Ravana in his might was extending the forest if his arms, whose strength he had acquired through service to you, with violence against your dwelling on Kailasa itself, you idly moved the tip of your great toe [causing him to fall] and even in Patala (the underworld) he could not find a resting place. Certain it is that when a trouble-maker prospers, he became mad. 13. The fact, O boon-giver, that [the asura] Bana reduced Sutraman’s (Indra’s) power, though it was so exalted, and thus brought the three worlds to being his retinue, that is no marvel, since he was paying devotion to your feet. To what elevation does bowing of the head to you not lead? 14. The stain which you received when you swallowed the poison, O three-eyed one, while you were swayed by compassion for the devas and asuras, who feared the sudden destruction of the universe, that stain on your throat, paradoxically, does not fail to produce beauty. Even disfigurement commands praise for one engaged in removing a danger to the world. 15. When Smara, the ever victorious, whose arrows never once fail their purpose in this world of gods, asuras, and men, viewed you, O lord, as just like the other gods, he became only an object of memory—for disdain of the self-controlled is not salutary. 16. The earth suddenly fell into peril as you stamped your foot; the ether, full of the host of constellations scattered by your flailing arms which were like iron bars, was also in peril, the sky shook again and again as its curving sides were struck by your matted hair flying loose while you were dancing to save the world. Is not your power a perverse one? 17. The heavenly Ganges, filling the sky, splendid in the scattering of its foam, which is counted to be the host of stars, the flood of waters, which seems like a mere drop on your head, makes the world seem only an island girdled by the ocean. By that alone your divine body with its enduring greatness can be imagined. 18. The earth was your chariot, your charioteer he who had a hundred sacrifices (Brahma); the lord of the mountains (Meru) your bow; your chariot wheels were the sun and moon, and he whose hands are emblazoned with sun and moon (Vishnu) was your arrow— what was the purpose of such a bombastic drum-beating when you wanted to burn up the three cities, which were no more than grass to you? The purposes of the lord with these his own creations were only sportive and not under others’ influence. 19. When Hari, who [daily] used to offer a thousand lotuses at your feet, was [once] short by one, he extracted one of his lotus-like eyes. That bit of excess devotion (his eye) underwent evolution, and in the form of his discus ever stays alert, O destroyer of the three cities, to protect the three worlds. 20. When the rite is over and gone to sleep, you stay awake to grant its fruit to the celebrants. Never can a ceremony, which is [not eternal but is] bound to come an end, be successful without propitiation of the Supreme soul. Therefore, considering that you are the guarantor of result in rites, folk place faith in Sruti, firm in their reliance upon ceremonies 21. Skilled in ceremonies was [the prajapati] Daksa, patron of the sacrifice, lord of embodied beings; the office of manipulators of the sacrifice was entrusted to the rsis, O giver of refuge; the hosts of gods were the supervising priests. [But] destruction of the ceremony came from you, who usually are intent upon granting the fruit of the rite. For it is certain that the sacrifice of one who performs them with denial of faith [in you] are only a kind of witchcraft. 22. O lord, the lord of creatures (Brahma), who in a stag’s form had been violently and lustfully pursuing his own daughter transformed in to a doe, while he was obsessed with desire to enjoy her, and who had fled from you with he was obsessed with desire to enjoy her, and who had fled from you with bow in your hand until he reached the sky—him yonder, pierced by your arrow up to the feathering, fear-stricken as he is, your ardor for the chase does not release even to this day. 23. O you who are devoted to restraint, if Devi, just because she is associated with you in the half-female androgynous from, still thinks you uxorious, though she saw even the flower-weaponed god (Kama), who had grasped his brunt up before her like grass, O crusher if the cities, then what, O granter of boons, can we expect from unsophisticated young women? 24. Your sport is in burning grounds, O destroyer of Smara; Pisacas (who eat the flesh of human beings) are your companions; ashes from a funeral pyre are ointment for your body; and your garland is a string of human skulls though your character and your name as well may be wholly inauspicious, yet, O ift-bestower, to those who call you to mind you are the supreme symbol of fortune. 25. When they (ascetics) cause the mind in the prescribed manner to retract into the inner heart, while their body-hair erect in joy, and their eyes flooded with tears of happiness, then that which those practicing self-restraint inwardly perceive, while they experience [supreme] joy as though immersed in a pool of nectar, that principle, the inexpressible, you surely are. 26. You are the sun, you are the moon, you are wind, you are fire, you are water, you are space, you are the earth, you are the atman—though it be that thus the perfected ones [of old] defined you as being limited, yet we know not that element here which you are not. 27. The triad (of Vedas), the three vrttis (states of waking, sleeping, deep sleep), the three worlds, and also the three gods (Brahma, Vishnu, Rudra), naming these with its three letters a etc. (a, u, m), and also that which is beyond differentiation, the fourth state, your domain, enclosed by subtle sounds, [all this constituting] you, O refuge-giver, complete and in your parts, the word Om describes. 28. Bhava, Sarva, Rudra, Pasupati, and then Ugra along with Mahant, similarly Bhima and Isana, this octad of your names—in it severally (that is, in each name), O god, resides sruti. To this (octad), the dear lofty seat [of truth and the gods], to you, the lord, do I offer my worship. 29. Reverence to [you as] him who is nearest, O you who love the forest waste (as a samnyasin), and reverence to [you as] him who is farthest! Reverence to [you as] him who is most minute, O destroyer of Smara, and reverence to [you as] him who is greatest! Reverence to [you as] the eldest, O three-eyed one, and reverence to [you as] the most youthful! Reverence to you as being everything, and reverence to you as Sarva the whole, being this universe! 30. Reverence to Bhava (the creator Brahma), full of rajas for creating the universe, and again Reverence! Reverence to Hara (the Destroyer), full of tamas for its dissolution, and again Reverence! Reverence to Mrda (the Compassionate, Vishnu), giving happiness to folk at the rise of sattva, and again Reverence! Reverence to Shiva in his supreme above, while is beyond the three gunas, and again Reverence! 31. Where is this my mind, so slightly evolved and subject to distress, and where is your power, which ever leaps across the boundaries of the gunas? Though I am therefore diffident, devotion has removed my hesitation and has set a flower offering of words at your feet, O giver of boons. (Courtesy: Dr W. NORMAN BROWN)