Argala, Kilaka, and How the Chandi Is Recited

The bolt and pin that frame recitation; the tradition of the full Path. Discipline as devotion.

The bolt and pin that frame recitation; the tradition of the full Path. Discipline as devotion.

Why You Cannot Just Open to the Battle

Before dawn in a Chandi temple, a reciter named Keshav sits on a low wooden seat with a brass lamp and a worn manuscript. It is the first day of Navaratri, and he means to recite the whole Saptashati, all seven hundred verses of the Goddess's story. But he does not open to the demon-battles and begin. He does something that a newcomer beside him finds strange. He recites two short hymns first, and only then turns to verse one.

The newcomer asks why. Why not go straight to the story everyone loves, the shape-shifting buffalo-demon, the blood-cloning Raktabija? Keshav's answer is the whole of this lesson: the tradition frames the recitation with a bolt and a pin, and without them, it says, the reading does not open.

The Bolt and the Pin

The main text is called the Saptashati, the seven hundred, for its roughly seven hundred verses. Around it the tradition places short guarding hymns, recited in a fixed order. The Kavacham of the last lesson is the first. Then come two more, with unusual names.

The Argala Stotram is named for the argala, the bolt or latch of a door. It is a hymn of plain, forceful requests, each line asking the Goddess for something and ending with the same drumbeat.

रूपं देहि जयं देहि यशो देहि द्विषो जहि।

rūpaṃ dehi jayaṃ dehi yaśo dehi dviṣo jahi |

Grant me grace, grant me victory, grant me honour, and destroy what opposes me.

Argala Stotram

The Kilaka Stotram is named for the kilaka, the pin or nail that locks a thing shut, and it is the stranger of the two. The tradition holds that the power of the Saptashati was, in a sense, pinned closed, and that reciting the Kilaka draws the pin and unlocks the fruit of the whole recitation. Where the Argala clears the obstacles in front, the Kilaka opens the lock.