The scene
The Mahābhārata war has lasted eighteen days. When it is over, almost everyone is dead: teachers, cousins, sons. Yudhiṣṭhira, eldest of the five Pāṇḍava brothers, has won the kingdom and cannot bear it.
On the battlefield lies Bhīṣma, the grandsire of both families. Years earlier he renounced the throne and swore lifelong celibacy so that his father could marry again, and for this he was granted the power to choose the hour of his own death. Pierced by so many arrows that his body does not touch the ground, he has chosen to wait for uttarāyaṇa, the sun’s turn northward.
Kṛṣṇa brings Yudhiṣṭhira to him. Across the Śānti Parva and the Anuśāsana Parva Bhīṣma teaches: the duties of a king, dharma in times of crisis, the path to liberation, the stories of the ṛṣis. The Sahasranāma comes near the end of this long instruction.
Who speaks
The Mahābhārata is told in layers. Vyāsa, the seer, taught it to his disciple Vaiśampāyana, who recites it to King Janamejaya. So the hymn begins Vaiśampāyana uvāca, ‘Vaiśampāyana said’. Inside his telling, Yudhiṣṭhira asks and Bhīṣma answers. At the close, verses kept by the tradition add the voices of Arjuna, Kṛṣṇa, Vyāsa, and Pārvatī and Śiva.
The six questions
Yudhiṣṭhira asks (verses 8–9):
- Who is the one God in the world?
- What is the one highest refuge?
- By praising whom,
- and by worshipping whom, do human beings reach the good?
- What is, in your view, the highest of all dharmas?
- By reciting what is a living being freed from the bonds of birth and saṃsāra?
Śaṅkara shows that Bhīṣma answers them in reverse order: first what to recite (the thousand names), then how to worship, whom to praise, which dharma is highest, what the supreme goal is, and last, who the one God is. Verses 10–19 are that answer, and then the names begin.
The names themselves
Bhīṣma calls the names gauṇa: each arises from a quality (guṇa) of the Lord. That is why they reward slow attention. Some describe his cosmic nature (Viśvam, the universe; Viṣṇu, the pervader), some his deeds and forms (Vāmana, the dwarf; Nārasiṃhavapuḥ, the man-lion; Rāma; Kṛṣṇa), some his tenderness (Bhaktavatsala, loving to his devotees; Suhṛt, the friend), some his weapons and emblems.
About ninety names occur more than once. Śaṅkara never treats a repeat as filler: each time he finds a new meaning, because the same name in a new place says something new.
The ṛṣi, the metre, the deity
Every mantra in the tradition is introduced with its ṛṣi, metre and deity, and the Sahasranāma keeps this form (verses 20–21 of the preface, chanted in many homes before the names):
- Ṛṣi: Veda Vyāsa, the great sage.
- Chandas (metre): anuṣṭubh, four quarters of eight syllables.
- Devatā: Bhagavān, the son of Devakī, that is, Kṛṣṇa.
The commentaries
Because it holds so much in so few words, the Sahasranāma has drawn great teachers to comment on it. Ādi Śaṅkara’s bhāṣya explains each name, often citing the Upaniṣads, the Gītā, the Viṣṇu Purāṇa and the Mahābhārata itself. In the Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition, Parāśara Bhaṭṭa, son of Kūreśa, a disciple of Rāmānuja, wrote the Bhagavad-guṇa-darpaṇa, ‘the mirror of the Lord’s qualities’, reading the names as a connected portrait of Viṣṇu’s forms and deeds. This course follows Śaṅkara.