qMonk literal translation — draft, pending review
Whoever reads this Hanuman Chalisa comes into siddhi — the thing achieved, the thing brought off.
And Gaurisha, Gauri's own lord, stands there as the witness to it.
The second promise-stanza in a row, and it makes a different move from the one before. Where that stanza gave a number, this one names a guarantor.
Sākhī is sākṣin, and the word is built out of akṣi, the eye: a witness is one who was present with their eyes open. The term belongs to law before it belongs to poetry. Calling a witness is not the same as making a claim — it is a claim offered with someone standing beside it, and it changes the kind of sentence being spoken. Devotional literature reaches for the gesture at exactly this point, where a text is saying the largest thing it will say.
The witness named is Śiva: Gaurīśa, lord of Gaurī, which is Pārvatī. Two things sit behind that choice and both are worth having. In the Rāmcaritmānas — the same poet's great work — the story of Rāma is narrated by Śiva to Pārvatī, so Śiva is already the guarantor of Rāma's telling in Tulsīdās's own frame. And there is the older and widely held tradition that Hanumān is an aṃśa, a portion, of Śiva; the Chalisa's own sixth verse is printed in two forms in the editions, one calling him Śaṅkara's suvana, his son, and the other svayaṃ, Śaṅkara himself, and that variation is precisely where the tradition shows. The witness, on either reading, is not a stranger to the subject.
Siddhi has appeared once already in the Chalisa, eight verses back, in its technical sense as one of the eight yogic attainments. Here it carries its plainer and older meaning: accomplishment, success, the thing done and finished. Both senses are read into this line, and the Awadhi supports either.
What the stanza asserts, it asserts — and it does not assert it alone.
Who would you want in the room with you when you promise something you really mean to keep?
qMonk literal translation — draft, pending review·Devanagari checked against two printings·Draft — awaiting reviewer·How these texts were made