Sri Lalita Sahasranama (With Sanskrit Text, Transliteration and English Translation)

The Introduction to this edition of Lalitasahasranama is taken from the now out-of-print translation of it by Prof. D. S. Sarma. In place of writing a new Introduction, we have adopted this, because it is a composition that cannot be excelled. It is an excellent, appreciative, but also critical, study of the Sahasranama as a piece of Stotra literature and as an exposition of the philosophy of the Mother cult. It is both a historical and a doctrinal study of this worship of the Supreme Being as the Mother, which is current all over India in different forms. In the translation of the Namavali (list of Namas) also we are very much indebted to Prof. Sarma, as many of the wordings of it are also taken from his translation. He has given only a very cryptic translation of each Nama. We have expanded it to full salutation-from with the Text in Devanagari and Romanised script with diacritical marks and English translation. In the Text of the hymn in Devanagari script, we have put hyphens dividing long word-combinations. This is done only for the convenience of readers who are not familiar with Sanskrit. They have no grammatical significance.