Calluna V. (callunav) wrote in linguaphiles,
Calluna V.
callunav
linguaphiles

Sanskrit prayer

I really don't *need* to know this, but it's driving me nuts, not least because I've spent an hour and a half trying to reproduce the text in question using devanagari characters which I don't actually know, using a keyboard layout which, even in the QWERTY form, is still half guesswork for me, and three different websites. All this because although I could get the characters to show up on my screen, I couldn't cut and paste them.

Finally, I gave up and took a screenshot. It's from this page which uses the Shushi TT fonts, and it gives a lot of prayers, giving the I-assume-Sanskrit, a transliteration, and a translation.

Screenshot here. Moderately large picture.

Explanation, in case you don't want to click through: in this particular case, it's the "ya devi sarvabhuteshu" slokas. The web page author gives a few examples to show the form, and then just gives the word which is inserted in each new phrase. E.g., "Ya devi sarvabhuteshu chetanetyabhidhiyate, namastasyai, namastasyai, namastasyai namo manah [sic]. -- Salutations again and again to the Devi who abides in all beings as consciousness." Then there's "Ya devi sarvabhuteshu buddhirupena samsthita, namastasyai, namastasyai, namastasyai, namo namah. -- Salutations again and again to the Devi who abides in all beings in the form of intelligence."

After that, there's just a list of attributes, which are supposed to be, "inserted after the 'ya devi sarvabhuteshu.' All of them, I notice, end in '--rupena.' I can't find this in the online dictionary I've got for Sanskrit, but I'm guessing that's what's getting translated as 'in the form of.' I also can't find 'sarvabhuteshu' (presumably I'm not finding these things because they're not in their root forms, although other possible answers also exist) but my dictionary gives 'sarvabhuutaani' as 'all existing things.' So possibly sarvabhuteshu means 'within all existing things' or something like that.

There's a little too much 'possibly' and 'presumably' in all that.

Here's my actual question: in 'chetanetyabhidhiyate' and 'buddhirupena samesthita', is there anything which should be repeated when the new words are inserted - for instance the bit that gets translated as any part of 'who abides in all beings as/in the form of--'* - which should be retained? Would the next line of the prayer be "Ya devi sarvabhuteshu nidrarupena, namastayai, namastayai, namo namah"? Or is there a word/suffix/phrase/whatever missing that's needed to make that actually make sense?



* There shall be no Wonder Twins references, y'all. I have spoken.
Tags: sanskrit
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