Stotra · स्तोत्रMantra

Subrahmanya Bhujangam — the peacock verse

Shankara's verse on Murugan mounted on his peacock — Subrahmanya Bhujangam 3.

Subrahmanya Bhujangam 3edition

Sanskrit · संस्कृत

मयूराधिरूढं महावाक्यगूढं मनोहारिदेहं महच्चित्तगेहम् । महीदेवदेवं महावेदभावं महादेवबालं भजे लोकपालम् ॥

mayūrādhirūḍhaṃ mahāvākyagūḍhaṃ manohāridehaṃ mahaccittageham । mahīdevadevaṃ mahāvedabhāvaṃ mahādevabālaṃ bhaje lokapālam ॥

Read in another script

No verified recitation yet. We publish audio only with a named reciter and a recorded licence, rather than files of unknown provenance.

Meaning

Mounted on the peacock, hidden within the great sayings; of enchanting form, dwelling in the great heart; god of the gods on earth, the very meaning of the great Veda; the child of Mahadeva — I worship the guardian of the worlds.

This rendering is by a DharmSetu editor, not a quotation from a published translation. Compare with the public-domain translation.

A Hindi meaning has not been written for this mantra yet. Hindi is authored by a named editor rather than machine-translated, so it arrives more slowly.

How to recite

Bhujangaprayata: four padas of twelve syllables, each four ya-ganas — light-heavy-heavy, four times. Once the pattern is in the ear the verse recites itself. महच्चित्तगेहम् is mahat + citta + geham, with the t assimilating to the following c and doubling — mahac-citta, an audible held consonant. The c is the ch of 'church', not the k of 'cat'.

Repetitions: 1 · 3
Time: sunrise, sandhya

Pronunciation key — sounds commonly got wrong

ट ठ ड ढ ण · ṭ ṭh ḍ ḍh ṇ: Retroflex — the tongue curls back and touches the roof of the mouth. Distinct from the dental त थ द ध न, where the tongue touches the teeth.
श ष स · ś ṣ s: Three different sounds: ś as in “shy”, ṣ retroflex and further back, s plain. Collapsing them changes words.
ः · ḥ (visarga): A soft outward breath echoing the preceding vowel — not a hard “ha”.
ं · ṃ (anusvara): Nasalises the vowel; the closing sound follows the consonant that comes next.
Long vs short vowels — a / ā, i / ī, u / ū: Vowel length is meaningful in Sanskrit. Hold the macron vowels roughly twice as long.
Aspirated consonants — kh, gh, ch, th, dh, ph, bh: A distinct puff of breath. ph is an aspirated p, never an English “f”.

Word by word

मयूराधिरूढम्mayūrādhirūḍham: mounted on the peacock(acc. sg.)
महावाक्यगूढम्mahāvākyagūḍham: hidden within the great sayings(acc. sg.)
मनोहारिदेहम्manohārideham: whose form captivates the mind(acc. sg.)
महच्चित्तगेहम्mahaccittageham: dwelling in the great heart(acc. sg.)
महीदेवदेवम्mahīdevadevam: god of the gods on earth — of the brahmins(acc. sg.)
महावेदभावम्mahāvedabhāvam: the very meaning of the great Veda(acc. sg.)
महादेवबालम्mahādevabālam: the child of Mahadeva(acc. sg.)
भजे

Context

Almost every word begins with ma. mayūra, mahāvākya, manohāri, mahat, mahīdeva, mahāveda, mahādeva — the verse alliterates on a single syllable for its full length, and the last pada resolves it by putting bhaje, 'I worship', where another m would have gone. The second epithet is the one that repays attention. mahāvākya-gūḍha, 'hidden within the great sayings', places Murugan inside the Upanishadic mahavakyas — tat tvam asi, aham brahmāsmi — which the Mantra Library already carries as separate records. A hymn addressed to a warrior god riding a peacock is claiming he is what those sentences are about. The bhujangaprayāta metre gives the hymn its name: bhujaṅga is a serpent, and the metre's glide is meant to move like one.

Shadanga — the six limbs

The traditional analytic frame for a mantra. Blank limbs are simply not recorded for this text.

chhanda: Bhujangaprayata
devata: Subrahmanya

Recited at / traditionally recited for

Dhyana (meditation)Protection (raksha)

Classified as Stotra — Devotional hymn literature — praise poetry rather than a Vedic formula. Basis for this classification.

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