Devi Upanishad 27 - Verse 27

Various Rishis

←Previous VerseNext Verse→

Devi Upanishad: Verse 27

Sanskrit (Devanagari)

मन्त्राणां मातृका देवी शब्दानां ज्ञानरूपिणी । ज्ञानानां चिन्मयातीता शून्यानां शून्यसाक्षिणी ॥

यस्याः परतरं नास्ति सैषा दुर्गा प्रकीर्तिता । तां दुर्गां दुर्गमां देवीं दुराचारविघातिनीम् । नमामि भवभीतोऽहं संसारार्णवतारिणीम् ॥२७–२८॥

Padapatha (Word Split)

मन्त्राणाम् । मातृका । देवी । शब्दानाम् । ज्ञान-रूपिणी ।

ज्ञानानाम् । चिन्मय-अतीता । शून्यानाम् । शून्य-साक्षिणी ।

यस्याः । परतरम् । न । अस्ति । सा । एषा । दुर्गा । प्रकीर्तिता ।

ताम् । दुर्गाम् । दुर्गमाम् । देवीम् । दुराचार-विघातिनीम् ।

नमामि । भव-भीतः । अहम् । संसार-अर्णव-तारिणीम् ।

Recitation with translationDevi Upanishad 27

IAST Transliteration

mantrāṇāṃ mātṛkā devī śabdānāṃ jñānarūpiṇī | jñānānāṃ cinmayātītā śūnyānāṃ śūnyasākṣiṇī ||

yasyāḥ parataraṃ nāsti saiṣā durgā prakīrtitā | tāṃ durgāṃ durgamāṃ devīṃ durācāravighātinīm | namāmi bhavabhīto'haṃ saṃsārārṇavatāriṇīm ||27–28||

Translation

မယ်တော်သည် မန္တရတို့၏ မာတရိကာ (အမိအရင်း/အခြေခံ) ဖြစ်တော်မူ၏။ စကားသံတို့၌ မယ်တော်သည် ဉာဏ်၏ ရုပ်သဘောတော်ဖြစ်၏။ ဉာဏ်တို့အားလုံးကို ကျော်လွန်၍ မယ်တော်သည် ချစ်မယ (သန့်ရှင်းသော အသိစိတ်) အဖြစ် လွန်ကဲတော်မူ၏။ သုညတို့အတွင်း၌ မယ်တော်သည် သုည၏ သက်သေ (စాక్షီ) ဖြစ်တော်မူ၏။ မယ်တော်ထက် မြင့်မားသော အရာမရှိ—ထို့ကြောင့် မယ်တော်ကို ‘ဒုရ္ဂါ’ ဟု ချီးမြှောက်ခေါ်ဆိုကြ၏။ ထိုဒုရ္ဂါ၊ ဖြတ်ကျော်ရန် ခက်ခဲသော မယ်တော်၊ မကောင်းသော အကျင့်ကို ဖျက်ဆီးသူကို—လောကဘဝ၏ ဖြစ်လာခြင်းကို ကြောက်ရွံ့သော ကျွန်ုပ် နမස්ကာရ ပြုပါ၏; မယ်တော်သည် သံသရာပင်လယ်ကို ကူးမြောက်စေသူ ဖြစ်တော်မူ၏။

Academic Translation

The Goddess is the matrix (mātṛkā) of mantras; of words she is of the form of knowledge. Beyond knowledges, she transcends as consciousness itself; of voids, she is the witness of void. Than whom there is nothing higher—she is proclaimed as Durgā. That Durgā, the difficult-to-cross Goddess, the destroyer of evil conduct, I bow to—being afraid of worldly becoming—(to her) who ferries across the ocean of saṃsāra.

Word by Word

mantrāṇāmof mantras

mātṛkāmother/source

devīthe Goddess

śabdānāmof words/sounds

jñānarūpiṇīhaving the form of knowledge

jñānānāmof knowledges

cinmayaconsciousness-made

atītātranscended/beyond

śūnyānāmof voids/emptinesses

śūnyavoid

sākṣiṇīwitness

yasyāḥwhose

parataramhigher/superior

nanot

astiexists

sāshe

eṣāthis

durgāDurgā

prakīrtitāis proclaimed

tāmher

durgāmDurgā

durgamāmhard to reach

devīmthe Goddess

durācāraof evil conduct

vighātinīmdestroyer

namāmiI bow to

bhavabecoming/worldly existence

bhītaḥafraid

ahamI

saṃsāraof saṃsāra

arṇavaocean

tāriṇīmthe one who carries across

Sandhi Notes

cinmayātītā = cinmaya + atītā
śūnyasākṣiṇī = śūnya + sākṣiṇī
saiṣā = sā + eṣā
durācāravighātinīm = durācāra + vighātinīm
bhavabhīto'haṃ = bhavabhītaḥ + aham
saṃsārārṇavatāriṇīm = saṃsāra + arṇava + tāriṇīm

Verse Context

Śabda-śakti and Cit (consciousness) as Brahman; mokṣa as crossing saṃsāra; sākṣin (witness)Mahavakya: Implicitly aligns with ‘prajñānam brahma’ (Brahman as consciousness/knowledge) and supports ‘tat tvam asi’ in contemplative import: the witnessing consciousness (śūnyasākṣiṇī) is the innermost self, not an external object.AtharvaAtharva-veda (Śaunaka tradition; Śākta Upaniṣad corpus) ShakhaChandas: Mixed: first line resembles anuṣṭubh pāda structure; overall devotional śloka style with some metrical looseness; not a strict Vedic meter in common recensions.

Ask anything about this verse

Answers come straight from the texts, with the shlokas they draw on. Ask in your own words.

Not sure where to start?

A free sign-in with Google or Apple keeps your chat saved across web and the app.

Read Upanishads in the Vedapath app

Scan the QR code to open this directly in the app, with word-by-word meanings, Sanskrit recitation where available, and more.

Continue reading in the Vedapath app

Open in App