qMonk literal translation — draft, pending review
Great hero, full of daring, your body hard as the thunderbolt —
drive the crooked thinking out of me. You are the one who keeps company with clear thinking.
Bajaraṃgī is bajra-aṅga, thunderbolt-limbed, and it is the name that has stuck to him in ordinary speech: Bajrangbali, the one whose body is the vajra. Vikrama is older and has a stride in it — the word for valour that moves, the same word used of Viṣṇu's three steps.
Then the line turns, and asks the thunderbolt for something very fine-grained. Mati is not raw intelligence; it is judgement, the mind in the act of deciding. Kumati is judgement gone crooked and sumati is judgement running true, and these are not two different faculties but two states of one. Nivāra is a warding-off, the verb you would use of driving something away from a door.
What he is asked to be, though, is gentler than what he is asked to do. He is saṃgī — companion. Not the installer of good sense, not its source. The one who keeps it company, which is closer to how anybody's judgement actually improves: not by being handed a better mind, but by spending time next to one.
Think of a time you changed your mind about something and it turned out better. Who was near you when that happened?
qMonk literal translation — draft, pending review·Devanagari checked against two printings·Draft — awaiting reviewer·How these texts were made