qMonk literal translation — draft, pending review
Hail, Hanuman — you are an ocean of knowing, and an ocean of every good quality there is.
Hail, chief of the monkeys, who lights up all three worlds at once.
The forty verses that give the poem its name begin here — chālīsā, from chālīs, forty — and the first thing they say about Hanumān is that he knows things.
Jñāna and guṇa together: what he understands, and what he is like. Sāgara, the sea, is the measure for both, and the image is about quantity before it is about depth — you do not come to the end of it. That an opening line reaches for learning first is worth holding on to, because the popular picture of Hanumān is a picture of arms and a mountain, and the poem spends its early verses arguing quietly with that.
Kapīśa is kapi, monkey, plus īśa, lord — the vānara world of the Rāmāyaṇa has kings and councils and a succession crisis of its own, and Hanumān belongs to it as a minister does, not as a pet.
Tihũ loka, the three worlds — the earth, the heavens above and the realms below — is the standard reckoning of everywhere. Ujāgara in Awadhi means renowned; underneath the usage is the sense of being brought out into the light. He is not described as famous in the three worlds. He is what makes them visible.
Think of the person you know who knows the most. Is that the first thing you would tell someone about them?
qMonk literal translation — draft, pending review·Devanagari checked against two printings·Draft — awaiting reviewer·How these texts were made