Bhaja Govindam — opening verse

The verse is a joke with a serious edge, and the joke is lost if the last word is translated loosely. Ḍukṛñ-karaṇe is not a general word for learning — it is a citation from Panini's list of verbal roots, the kind of thing a grammar student memorises. The line names the very thing its audience was busy with. The traditional account, recorded in the commentarial literature, is that Shankara said this on seeing an elderly scholar drilling grammar in Varanasi. The poem's other title, Moha Mudgara, means "the hammer for delusion". This verse works as the refrain, returning between the others. The composition is usually printed with 31 or 33 verses; the first twelve are traditionally taken as Shankara's, with a further set attributed to his disciples, and the last one or two vary between recensions. Authorship of the core verses is a traditional attribution rather than a documented one.