Ya Devi Sarva-Bhuteshu: The Refrain of the Whole Course
The hymn revisited as practice; the Goddess in all beings. Reciting is remembering she is in you.
The hymn revisited as practice; the Goddess in all beings. Reciting is remembering she is in you.
The Line You Have Been Hearing All Along
Picture a student, call her Ananya, home in Pune on the third night of Navaratri. A clay lamp burns on the floor. The room smells of camphor and marigold, and her grandmother's worn copy of the Saptashati lies open on her knees. Ananya has recited this hymn every autumn since she was small, the way you sing a song whose words you never quite look at. Tonight, for no reason she can name, she stops at the line she has said a hundred times, and reads it slowly, and asks what it actually means.
The line is the refrain that has run through this whole course.
या देवी सर्वभूतेषु विष्णुमायेति शब्दिता। नमस्तस्यै नमस्तस्यै नमस्तस्यै नमो नमः॥
yā devī sarvabhūteṣu viṣṇumāyeti śabditā | namas tasyai namas tasyai namas tasyai namo namaḥ ||
To the Goddess who in all beings is called the power that veils and sustains, salutations to Her, salutations to Her, again and again salutations.
Devi Mahatmyam, Chapter 5 (the Ya Devi hymn)
The gods sang this on the Himalayas before the last battle, aspect after aspect, and we have met its verses all through the story: the Goddess as intelligence, as forbearance, as memory, as faith. Now, at the start of the final chapter, it is worth stopping where Ananya stopped, and reading the refrain as what the tradition says it truly is: not a prayer sent far away, but a description of where the Goddess actually lives.
Read the Grammar, Find the Teaching
Look at the three words that repeat in every verse. Sarva-bhuteshu means in all beings. Rupena means in the form of. Samsthita means she abides, she is established. The hymn does not say the Goddess is above all beings, or beyond them, or watching from a far heaven. It says she abides in all beings, as this quality and that one.