Bronwen Bledsoe
The text presented here is an inscription from Nepal, a praise-poem named Sar vaparadhastotra, which King Pratap Malla had hammered into the golden doors of the temple of the Tantric goddess Taleju in the middle of the seventeenth century. A public and literary text, the Sarvaparadhastotra offers a concise - if difficult - instance of Tantra’s deployment in one historically specific social world.
Mise-en-scene
In late medieval Nepal, the temple of the goddess Taleju commanded the skyline of the city-kingdom of Kathmandu, while her principal servants - rulers of a dynasty named Malla - commanded the world of the Newar people. No structure in the realm could be build higher than the goddess’s imposing temple in the royal palace at the heart of the mandala-patterned city-kingdom. The Tantric goddess Taleju was literally and conceptually the most exalted being of the realm. No one could miss the fact of the goddess’s existence or her power, yet access to her sanctuary was jealously restricted. Full initiation into the method of her wor ship amounted to consecration into kingship itself in the late Malla period (ca. 1600-1768 C.E.).
And just who might this goddess named Taleju be? There is still no definitive answer to this question, at least none openly spoken. The name may be derived from the Newari tale, meaning high or upper, and the honoric suffix ju; thus, “the deity of the high temple.” Or, it may be a transformation of Tulaja, patron deity of the great Maratha king Sivaji (1630?-1680). In this poem the king addresses her as Kali, a fierce Saiva goddess with both exoteric and esoteric forms aplenty; he also calls her Kalika, “little Kali.” Both the latter name and certain details of the poem suggest the authority of the Kalika Purana of Assam. Elsewhere King
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Pratap addresses the goddess as Candika, Ambika, Uma, Durga, and Bhavani. No doubt we are to understand that she is any and all of the Saiva goddess’s many forms. Informed scholarly speculation opines that her true esoteric identity is Siddhilaksmi, high deity of the Northern Transmission of Kaula Tantra, but Taleju is not called by that name in public. Just who she is for practical purposes emerges from her supremacy in the kingdom, and her mastery over the king.
Pratap Malla (reigned 1641-1674) was perhaps the most flamboyant king ever to rule in Nepal. Local chronicles and oral tradition remember him as a great tantrika, a pupil of several famous gurus, and a protagonist of Tantric duels and deeds of daring. Pratap was a great self-publicist, particularly fond of elaborate Sanskrit inscriptions, where he where he invariably signed himself “kavindra”, or poet-king. Pratap’s favorite topic of conversation was the divine company he kept, and his favorite conversation partner was the goddess he addresses in this poem.
Politics and Tantra
Kings had powers, responsibilities, problems, and potentialities that set them apart from other mortals. With our modern presupposition of a clear division between the domains of religion and politics, it might be thought that the proper concern of kings would be the exercise of power in statecraft, in the sense of administration and warfare. The historical record is, however, scanty on such mundane matters. What texts of all types do choose to speak of is the continuing quest of mortals to integrate their lived world with the worlds of the divine. Nowhere was this quest of more consequence for society as a whole than in the case of kings, for their extant words and works all indicate an overriding concern with what might be called “cosmopolitical order.” By this term I mean a social and/or political order whose constituency was not confined to mortals but was actively extended at every turn to include divine as well as human beings in a single conceptual and practical frame.
Constructing an inclusive cosmopolitical order around a Tantric deity involved one major problem. Tantric knowledge and practices are by definition secret, whereas political life must be public. How could Tantra be deployed for public purposes without compromising its essential secrecy?
In general, the Mallas negotiated this problem by recourse to what Robert Levy has called “advertised secrets.” This useful oxymoron breaks down as advertising, calling attention to the existence and importance of private deities, plus secrecy, maintaining resolute silence on particularities of content. Taleju’s conspicuous yet inaccessible temple is a prime example of the advertised secret rendered in ar
chitectural terms. Royalty were not the only agents of the period to make use of the advertised secret: Newar Buddhists and some brahman lineages had also taken one or another variety of Tantric knowledge as the highest and most efficacious form of truth. Their deities too were announced and concealed in special archi
tectural structures; their initiations too authorized roles of privilege in society. Kings had the responsibility to maintain continuities between sociopolitical
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order on earth and an encompassing universe of divine powers. That is, they were concerned with the lives of the gods, and with the lives of mortals defined as servants of the gods. In the Kathmandu Valley, temples by the hundreds and thousands were the principal sites for the articulation of cosmopolitical order, for service to deities new and old generated complex networks of obligation and privilege among mortals of all classes. Inscriptions on these temples constituted a public and permanent discourse on relations of cosmic and mortal power. It is probably true that only a small proportion of the king’s subjects could read the letters placed on display in inscriptions, and even fewer would have been able to penetrate the stylized Sanskrit verse. But we should not doubt that most people would have had a substantial understanding of what was being said. The king was the foremost servant of the goddess; thus he was foremost among mortals; therefore he should be served by all other mortals. This was the logic in force.
The poet-king Pratap did not put the matter so bluntly. Inscriptions were tra ditionally a medium for display of Sanskrit literary virtuosity, and more than any Nepali king, Pratap turned the subtleties and sophistication of Sanskrit poetic convention to the articulation of power. His problem with respect to the Tantric goddess was to speak of her without compromising the esoteric heart of the rela tionship. His solution, I suggest, was to preserve the intimacy of the king/goddess dyad by overlaying its esoteric heart with a reformulation centered on exoteric devotion. Within the frame of exoteric devotion, Pratap constructed his own kingly persona by juxtaposing the special forms of knowledge of which he was master with a posture of extravagant humility. Among these special forms of knowledge was his understanding of the goddess’s role in the realm as a whole: she commanded not only him, but his city-kingdom, and ultimately the universe. As an open and public production, the inscription is amenable to an exoteric surface reading. But the poem’s very construction - through display and con cealment, contrast and camouflage - invites penetration beyond its facade.
Explicit Arguments and Counterevidence
The overt message of Pratap’s Sarvaparadhastotra, or “Hymn for the Forgiveness of All Faults,” is resolutely exoteric. It is quite possible to read past its esoteric component with barely a pause. In mood, the poem is confessional rather than perfection-seeking; goddess and practitioner relate as mother and child, without hint of erotic charge. Its literary category is stotra, “praise,” “eulogy,” or “hymn.” Its genre in the conventional division of Indic religious modes is that of bhakti, “devotion” or “participation.” What the poet craves is an intimacy with the god dess that is profound but in no way secret. The poem’s overall thrust and over
riding tone are encoded in an insistent refrain, “O Mother, let my faults be for given! Kalika, Treasure of Victory, be gracious.”
The poem’s explicit argument centers on the king’s abject failure to accomplish what he should have accomplished, namely, service to the deity - service in the form of worship and knowledge, or at least exquisite eulogy. The obstacles to her
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service, his lapses, and his inadequacies are inventoried and examined one after another. The impossibility of achieving her grace through individual effort is argued in the first half of the poem, which presents obstacles and inadequacies by category. It opens with four strong verses on the impediments entailed in the various stages of life: infancy, childhood, youth, and old age each constrains mind and body in some way to prevent her worship. Then the king speaks of the failures of paths (margas) and performative practices (vidhis). Orthodoxies include re
vealed and “remembered” brahmanical wisdom, esoteric knowledge and practice, simple acts of devotion performed by bodily and mental faculties - according to the poem, the king has succeeded in none of these.
One important result of the inventory of failures is to focus attention on Pratap Malla. It is the figure of the poet-king, not of the goddess, that is carefully con structed throughout the stotra. The critical point in the poem’s construction of the king is the status of the faults or failings (aparadha) around which it revolves. The word aparadha could be taken more strongly: “offense” or “outrage” is not going too far. In large measure, the force of the poem derives from the tension between the king’s self-deprecation and the mass of internal and external evidence to the contrary.
Few of the poet’s statements concerning his failings can be taken at face value. Some are indeed rooted in human inevitabilities, as with the age-determined constraints on mind and body. Most demand active interpretation. One clear example is the king’s apology (at verse 16) that the goddess’s worship had not been performed at her temple at festival time, through his “wrong-headed neg
ligence.” This is extremely unlikely, for the Festival of the Nine Nights (navaratri) was and remains a great state occasion, hardly subject to lapse. Elsewhere (verses 11-12) Pratap exhorts his body’s limbs and senses - ears, tongue, nose, thoughts, spirit - to partake of her, and then laments that he did not do so. Again, one must wonder if it were possible for him not to have performed these acts. What Pratap must mean is that he has in fact done all of these things, and yet something eludes him. Other portions of the poem, such as the difficult quasi-esoteric verses (6-10), are hard to understand at all without supplying this sense of oblique dissatisfaction. (My translation does so.) “Failings” or “faults” here serve to prove discriminating excellence, in a way that boasting could not.
The text itself offers evidence contradicting the poet’s self-deprecation. The king calls himself feeble-minded, yet he gives voice to keen sensibilities, and in poised and polished Sanskrit verse. Speaking to the goddess, he calls himself a child, yet his signature epithets outside the poem proper address mortals in proud and magisterial tone:
Thus ends the Sarvaparadhastotra composed by him who excels in all fields of ex pertise, including war, book-learning, and music, the ruler of great rulers, the lord of Nepal, the great scholar, the lord of the circle of all kings, the supreme king of kings, the most worshipful poet-king, Jaya Pratapa Malla.
With regard to the goddess, the king is all humility; with regard to men, he is all majesty. As he serves, so should he be served.A N ADVERTISE D SECRE T 199
The king’s expertise as a master of knowledge and as a master of men comes into active play in the latter portion of the poem, where the stock refrain gives way to specific inflections, and the deity’s merits are moved to the fore. Particu larly significant is Pratap’s account of the way the goddess pervades the polity and integrates the world of mortals. Specific margas are still said to be inadequate: the competing doctrines of Vaisnavas, Saivas, and Buddhists - among others - all miss the mark set forth as paramount; that is, they fail to truly serve her. Yet, argues the poem, she is integral to each approach: the brahmanical Gayatri mantra is the goddess personified; the Vaisnava goddess Laksmi and the Buddhist Vajra varahi are none other than she; she is even the abstract principle niyati (“neces sity”) of the non-theist Mimamsa school of classical philosophy. Pratap knows that “She is the One whom all margas serve.” (We should note that the followers of these other margas may themselves have known nothing of the sort.) She is the one who pervades the city-kingdom and renders it auspicious, a sahkari na gari. The same phrase implies that she belongs to both the cosmic order of Siva and its citizenry on earth. Pratap’s knowledge of unity in diversity is ultimately political, for it manages both to affirm and subordinate the contending views of ultimate truth that flourished in his realm.
And what of the poem’s overt message concerning methods of approach to the divinity? None of his many efforts has succeeded in bringing the king to the state he desires, which is total intimacy with the goddess. The poem of devotion ap pears to be his last hope. Can we therefore take it that bhakti-style submission was truly Pratap’s preferred mode of relation to the goddess? More broadly, is this really evidence that in late medieval Nepal, Tantra was thought to be a less efficacious approach than emotional bhakti?
Bhakti and Tantra
Precisely what the Sarvaparadhastotra has to say on Tantric topics is unfortunately not altogether clear. Published transcriptions of the poem present variously prob lematic readings, and direct access to the lettering on the golden doors is not readily obtained. The three verses (6-8) that pertain directly to Tantra may have been somewhat obscure in their own time, for the poet’s intent seems to have been simultaneously to display and to camouflage an initiate’s special knowledge. In modern times, the problem of construing technical terminology in an exoteric framework is yet more difficult. From the number of points at which the poem touches upon esoteric topics, it is clear, however, that among the paths of ap
proach to divinity alternative to that of bhakti or self-surrender, it is in Tantra that success might have been expected.
The poem’s final verses offer an important closing reflection on the goddess’s grace. Because tantrikas of all six Kaula schools of transmission (sadamnaya) achieve success (siddhi) at her pleasure, so does Pratap hope that she will be pleased with his poem of praise, and thus forgive every conceivable sin. The juxtaposition of esoteric and devotional approaches makes the important sugges-
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tion that poetry is the sadhana (perfection-oriented practice) of the king - the king as devotee, that is.
The discussion in this paper has followed discursive convention in treating bhakti as an approach to divinity distinct from other Indicforms of religious practice. The bhakti mode is usually glossed as devotionalism, emotional in na ture, with humility and self-surrender as key stances. As such, bhakti is distin guished from Tantra’s esotericism on the one hand, and the ritualism of profes sional liturgies on the other. More technically, the term bhakti - a derivative of the verbal root bhaj, “share” or “participate” - refers to the project of mortal par ticipation in the very being of the deity concerned. In this sense bhakti may be an important component of both Tantra and professional liturgies. The Sarva parddhastotra is, however, centered on emotion and devotion.
Two other important contrasts between bhakti and Tantra are pertinent to the question of what texts such as the Sarvaparadhastotra meant in late medieval Nepal. The first is bhakti’s amenability to aestheticization in self-consciously lit erary endeavors: Tantric texts typically have a different thrust and texture entirely. Similarly, the sorts of intimacy that Tantra and bhakti respectively seek to establish between worshiper and deity pertain to entirely different domains. Devotional bhakti is appropriate to exterior and public contexts; esoteric Tantra is predicated on privacy and concealment.
My suggestion is that in the Sarvaparadhastotra - and throughout his inscrip tional career - Pratap Malla used bhakti as the public face of Tantra. The fact of his relationship with the Tantric goddess was no secret; in important senses, it was the pivot of late Malla kingship. But articulating that relationship in the verbal medium and in the public realm required Tantra’s paraphrase or overlay, and the bhakti brand of intimacy was eminently suitable for purposes of display. Bhakti added an exoteric and aesthetic dimension to the relationship without compro mising its secret core.
This introduction to the Sarvaparadhastotra has tried to relate Pratap’s inscrip tion to the lived social world of its particular time and place. All the evidence indicates that the problem which most engaged agents of the period was that of constructing the world of mortals for maximum interface with the worlds of divinity. The problem for the late Malla kings was to deploy power ultimately referable to Tantra for real-world political purposes. Pratap’s poem makes it clear that the knowledge that bound devotee to deity constituted the conceptual center of the cosmo-political order realized in his realm. Far from being a free-floating text, the inscription’s situation as a physical object in the real lived world is also highly significant. Emblazoned on the golden doors of Taleju’s high temple in the heart of the city, the inscription - like the temple itself - advertised the secret at the pivotal point of the city-kingdom’s life.
If what is at stake here were only Pratap Malla’s poems, or only the history of late medieval Nepal, consideration of inscriptional texts would be tangential to the greater study of Tantra. But the larger point is that Tantra in practice - real historical practice - must always negotiate some interface with the public gaze, for even in maintaining secrecy its practitioners shape the social world.
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Transcriptions of the Sarvaparadhastotra have been published several times. Tran scriptions show significant variations, corresponding in part to the three times Pratap had the poem inscribed at different sites, none of which is open to foreign researchers. My translation follows the unpublished reading graciously supplied by the learned Gurusekhara Rajopadhyaya Sarma of Kathmandu. The textual in tegrity of the inscription is best retained in the edition published by Yogi Nara harinatha et al. in Samskrta-sandesa 1 (Kathmandu, 1953): 26-30. Naraharinatha transcribes the stone inscription Pratapa Malla had erected at the shrine of the goddess GuhyeSvari in N.S. 780, or 1659/1660 C.E. More readily available is the reading supplied by Gautamavajra Vajracarya in his Hanumandhoka Rajadarabara (Kathmandu: Nepala ra Esiyali Adhyayana Sasthana, Tribhuvana-Visvavidyalaya, 1978), pp. 225-27’. This transcription is of the poem embossed on the doors of Taleju’s temple, in or near N.S. 792, or 1671/1672 C.E. At pages 208-9 of the same work, Vajracarya presents an earlier version of Pratap’s poem, carved into the now-crumbling stone bath of an inner courtyard of the Kathmandu palace between N.S. 772 and 773, or 1651-1653 C.E. Most problematic is the reading of Taleju’s doors by D. R. Regmi, in his Medieval Nepal, vol. 4. (Patna: the author, 1966), pp. 97-101. Regmi does not supply a date, but inserts the inscription in sequence at N.S. 775.
Further Reading
The phrase “advertised secrets” was coined by Robert Levy, whose Mesocosm: Hinduism and the Organization of a Traditional Newar City in Nepal (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990) contains meticulously compiled ethnographic data on one Newar city. On the goddess Taleju, see Bert van den Hoek and Balgopal Shrestha, “Guardians of the Royal Goddess: Kumar and Daitya as Protectors of Taleju Bhavani of Kathmandu,” Contributions to Nepalese Studies 19.2 (1992): 193-222. An important account of the Tantric practitioner’s - very different - interface with the lived social world is presented in Alexis Sanderson’s “Purity and Power among the Brahmins of Kashmir,” in The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History, edited by Michael Carrithers et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). On the Saiva deities and knowledges to which this paper has alluded, see Sanderson’s “Saivism and the Tantric Traditions,” in The World’s Religions, edited by Stuart Sutherland et al. (London: Routledge, 1986). Mary Shepherd Slusser’s Nepal Mandala: A Cultural Study of the Kathmandu
Valley, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982) is an indispensible compendium of information on the history, deities, architecture, and folklore of the area.
Many of Pratap Malla’s other inscriptions are well edited in Abhilekha-Samgraha 3 (Kathmandu: Samsodhana Mandala, 1961). Two Puranas that had particular currency in the late medieval period are helpful for understanding the poem’s arguments concerning the goddess. On Kalika and her “oneness” with Siva see the Kalika Puana, usefully translated in three volumes by B. N. Shastri (Delhi: Nag
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Publishers, 1991-1992); verse 9’s specification of the male gods as her vehicles is set forth in chapter 58, verses 59-71 of this work. On the goddess’s supremacy over and subsumption of a range of deities normally held as distinct, see the Devibhagavata Purana; readily available is the edition The Srimad Devi Bhagawatam,
translated by Hari Prasanna Chatterji, Sacred Books of the Hindus, vol. 26 (New Delhi: Oriental Books, 1977 [1921-1923]).
Sarvaparadhastotra by Pratapa Malla
Homage to the thrice-illustrious Kalika.
- The sort of anguish felt by the child, whose body is tortured by the garland of flaming digestive fires producing waves of piss and shit, reborn from his mother’s cavernous womb as a result of past evil’s excess,
Can someone like me, or one still more simple-minded, describe it? O Mother, let my faults be forgiven! Kalika, Treasure of Victory, be gracious.
- In childhood’s painful state - incapable of knowledge, in a body wet with its own filth - one cries constantly because it is impossible to say what hurts, and because one is greedy to drink milk,
In this state, which is totally dependent on others, there is not even recol lection of the mother who makes suffering cease.
O Mother, let my faults be forgiven! Kalika, Treasure of Victory, be gracious.
- Wealth and youth feed egoism, and that mind-set respects no one. I adored sexual games with women, and became so enchanted with this foul adoration that not for a moment did I adore you, the Primal One, the most deserving of those who deserve to be honored.
O Mother, let my faults be forgiven! Kalika, Treasure of Victory, be gracious.
- In the decrepitude of old age - which consists of diseases starting with coughing, wheezing, and being bent over, when walking and breathing are like punishment, and the heart finds pleasure only in eating - one’s thoughts are empty of her who is Made of Pure Thought,
When I am sinking into Death’s snare, befouled by my own filth, and worries grow ever greater,
O Mother, let my faults be forgiven! Kalika, Treasure of Victory, be gracious.
- I was unawakened in yoga, I was inattentive to the commands of the Veda and indifferent to the orthodox smarta path, I lacked the power to apply myself to Samkhya metaphysics and the like, I had no ears to hear talk of governance and conduct.
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My thoughts lack focus even when turned to praise and reflection on you, who are Speech Embodied.
O Mother, let my faults be forgiven! Kalika, Treasure of Victory, be gracious.
- Located like the Supreme Siva at the Brahma-lotus atop the head, you were never worshiped through mental acts, nor were you worshiped by means of external rituals, such as those performed in the yantraraja by me, even though my thoughts were pure,
Though every act was faithfully performed, fire-oblations and the rest, still none really reached you.
O Mother, let my faults be forgiven! Kalika, Treasure of Victory, be gracious.
- In my material body composed of the five gross elements, and of Brahma and other deities, I did not honor you - who are eternal in the form of mantra and the Inner Sound, who are the Queen of Breath, who are Made of Pure Thought -
I did not honor you by means of the unparalleled sacrifice of evils cut like animals with the sword of knowledge, because the blaze of desire and anger is brighter than the sun and moon.
O Mother, let my faults be forgiven! Kalika, Treasure of Victory, be gracious.
- She is that which moves in the element-free subtle body, and in the mind, and in the essence of the self as known through insight; she is transcendent, an extraordinary thing composed of bliss, whose own self consists of ultimate truth,
And yet she is hidden from me. I have not even for a moment managed full consciousness of her subliminal presence.
O Mother, let my faults be forgiven! Kalika, Treasure of Victory, be gracious.
- Dhata [Brahma] in the form of a lotus, Hari [Visnu] in the shape of a lion, Sambhu [Siva] as a ghost - these gods who are portions of yourself serve as your illustrious vehicles at particular times,
But I am just a mortal who does not know single- and multi-forms at the time of sacrifice.
O Mother, let my faults be forgiven! Kalika, Treasure of Victory, be gracious.
- You merely fixed your gaze on the best of yogins and that Great Lord - scorcher of Madana, bearer of the trident, holder of the bow - became the Lord of the Simple, for his heart was stolen away,
So how shall I, of the dull and wandering thoughts, offer elegant verses of praise to you?
O Mother, let my faults be forgiven! kalika, Treasure of Victory, be gracious. 11. Ears! Listen ceaselessly to the stream of goodly descriptions of her.
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Tongue! Sing out, I say. Thoughts, meditate on her feet! You pair of eyes, behold her body. Spirit! Merge yourself here. Nose! Smell the flowers offered to the daughter of the Best of Mountains.
But I did not do this.
O Mother, let my faults be forgiven! Kalika, Treasure of Victory, be gracious.
- Feet! Go forth to circumambulate daily. Hands, do puja! Head, bow your self in reverence. Heart, do continuous japa. Spirit, go to the state of absorption in her!
But I, who am deeply corrupt, did not perform your worship by sharing in Bhavani thus.
O Mother, let my faults be forgiven! Kalika, Treasure of Victory, be gracious.
- Let her be served - by those who have realized that wisdom, wealth, land, all forms of grandeur, immortality, and the like are but trifles made of fear, mixed with a little happiness, and thus doomed to be consumed by Time,
With body, speech, and mind let her be served - by those who have realized that she and Sankara are One, for she is made of Endless Bliss, she is the Woman of the Beautiful City, she is the blessed Sankari of our City.
- Neither in fate, nor in the opinions of the Kapalikas and their like, nor in the collected Vedic teachings, nor in the doctrines of the Vaisnavas, the Sau gatas, the Saivas, the Sauras, nor of those who put Ganesa first, nor in the path of devotion to the guru, nor in the service prescribed by the Kaulikas who teach the rules for your observances, with perpetual, occasional, and other rites, In none of these is your worship accomplished.
Mistress of the afflicted! Protect me who takes refuge at your feet.
- You are the Gayatri of the Vaidikas, Daughter of the Ocean (Laksmi) of the Vaisnavas, Mahesi of the Mahesvaras, according to the categories of doc trine on earth, Vajravarahi of the Saugata yogins and, further, Necessity of the Mimamsakas.
Mother, let my faults be forgiven! Treasure of Victory, the One whom fol lowers of all margas serve.
- Kali! Even at a power-seat pleasing as this, even when festival time came around, the puja of your two feet was not openly rendered, due to my wrong headed negligence. Thus you have been slighted, but don’t be angry with fool ish me, who has come to take refuge in you.
Lady, mother, giver of auspiciousness! when a bad son is born, let not the mother turn bad too.
- Mother! the world’s Kaulikas partake of you with Six Transmissions of teachings, and the Success of their six types of practice rests at their fingertips easily, through your grace.
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But how might I sing your praises? Even this poem is no true praise. Mother of Speech, be content with what has been uttered by the illustrious King Pratapa.
- That which I have done or caused to be done - in morning, noon, evening, or night; through thought, speech, or deed; with feet, hands, or eyes; through smelling, hearing, or touch; by myself, through another person, or at the word of the guru; by virtue of fate or by force -
Every single fault of mine, overlook it! O sea of compassion, O Devi Kali!
Thus ends the Sarvaparadhastotra composed by him who excels in all fields of expertise, including war, book-learning, and music, the ruler of great rulers, the lord of Nepal, the great scholar, the lord of the circle of all kings, the supreme king of kings, the most worshipful poet-king, Jaya Pratapa Malla.