Lalita Sahasranama — the opening verse

Tripura Sundari is the third Mahavidya in the Mundamala order and the supreme deity of the Srikula, and this is where her thousand names begin. The sahasranama sits in the Brahmanda Purana, spoken by Hayagriva to Agastya, and it is the most widely recited Srividya text — chanted in full on Fridays, on Navaratri, and at Lalita Sahasranama parayanas across the South. The four names move deliberately from intimacy to sovereignty and then to origin. *Sri Mata* is the mother. *Sri Maharajni* is the empress. *Srimat Simhasaneshvari* seats her on the lion-throne — the point at which the hymn stops describing a family relation and starts describing a reign. Then *chidagnikundasambhuta*: she rises from the *kunda*, the sacrificial fire-pit, but the fire is *cit*, consciousness. She is not born of a womb or of an element; she comes out of the fire of awareness itself, and the last word says why — *devakaryasamudyata*, risen for the work that had to be done. Whether this verse belongs to the group of Mahavidya mantras or to Srividya proper is a question of which lineage is asking. The Srikula would say Tripura Sundari is not one of ten but the one of whom the ten are aspects.