Three Times, and Then a Request

qMonk literal translation — draft, pending review

Jaya three times marks a turn. The word has been used singly at the poem's opening and it comes back here trebled, which in sung Awadhi is how a text signals that it is entering its closing movement — the praise gathered up and repeated before the last things are asked for.

Gosāīṃ is gosvāmin, and the literal sense is lord of the cows, which in this usage long ago became lord of the senses — one whose faculties go where he sends them rather than where they please. It is also an honorific carried by men of religion in north India, and the poet of the Chalisa is himself known by it.

The request in the second line is the sharpest thing in the closing verses, and it is easy to hear as ordinary politeness. Gurudeva kī nāīṃ — in the manner of a guru. Not: give me what I want. Not: intervene. Grace of the specific kind a teacher's grace is, which is not a favour at all. A teacher who is kind to you gives you something that changes what you are able to see, and it usually costs you an effort and sometimes it stings. Of all the shapes generosity can take, that is a particular one to have asked for by name.

And it closes an arc the text opened with. The first of the Chalisa's opening dohas began at śrīguru carana saroja raja — the dust of the lotus feet of the revered guru, taken up to polish the mirror of the mind. The poem starts at a guru's feet and, thirty-seven verses later, asks to be treated the way a guru treats a student. The frame closes before the promises begin.

Printed and sung editions divide on the opening: some set jaya jaya jaya, others the colloquial contraction jai jai jai. Both are widely sung, and jaya jaya jaya is followed here as the reading of the majority of witnesses.