qMonk literal translation — draft, pending review
You are the one who hands out the eight great powers and the nine treasure-stores.
Mother Janaki — Sita — gave you that as a gift, so that you would have it to give.
Two technical lists, and then a sentence that changes what the lists mean.
The aṣṭa siddhi are the eight attainments catalogued in the yoga and Purāṇic literature: aṇimā, becoming minute; mahimā, becoming vast; garimā, becoming heavy; laghimā, becoming weightless; prāpti, reaching anything; prākāmya, having one's will unobstructed; īśitva, mastery; vaśitva, the power to bring others under one's sway. In a Hanumān text the first two are not abstractions — the Rāmāyaṇa has him shrink small enough to enter Laṅkā unnoticed and swell large enough to be seen from anywhere, and the Chalisa has already sung both.
The nava nidhi are the nine treasures associated with Kubera, the keeper of wealth. Nidhi means a store, something laid down and kept — a hoard, not a sea. Their names vary between the Purāṇas and later lists, which is normal for enumerations of this kind, and no two sources will give quite the same nine.
Then the second line does something the first did not prepare for. Having named him dātā, giver, the verse immediately says where the giving came from: asa bara dīna jānakī mātā, Mother Jānakī gave such a boon. Sītā, daughter of Janaka. The giver is a giver by somebody else's gift, and the poem says so in the same breath as the title, rather than leaving it to be worked out. Whatever passes through his hands was put there.
That order — grant the honour, then name its source — is a recognisable habit of Hanumān devotion, and it is the same shape as the verse that comes next, where the wish made for him is that he stay a servant.
Has anyone ever given you something mainly so that you could give it to somebody else?
qMonk literal translation — draft, pending review·Devanagari checked against two printings·Draft — awaiting reviewer·How these texts were made