The verse and its meaning · Stotras · Stotras — Aditya Hridayam

Frost, Foes, and Ingratitude

Aditya Hridayam 20

तमोघ्नाय हिमघ्नाय शत्रुघ्नायाऽमितात्मने । कृतघ्नघ्नाय देवाय ज्योतिषां पतये नमः

Meaning · English

Salutations to the one who destroys darkness, destroys cold, destroys enemies, whose self has no measure; to the god who destroys the ungrateful, master of all the luminaries.

The sun is greeted by the things it ends. It ends darkness. It ends cold and frost. It ends enemies. Its self has no measure and cannot be taken in at once. Then comes a sharper line. It ends the ungrateful, the people who take a kindness and forget it. Forgetting a giver stands in the same list as night and frost, as something the sun clears away. Last, it is master of the lights of the sky, the stars and planets that also shine.

A car windshield is white with frost at dawn. No one scrapes it. The sun reaches the glass, and by mid-morning the frost is simply gone. That is the kind of destroying named here. Darkness, cold and the rest end because the sun arrives and stays, not because it strikes at them.

अर्थ · हिन्दी

In this book

• Before: Master of Three, All-Consuming · Aditya Hridayam 19
• Next: Gold, Fire, and Witness · Aditya Hridayam 21
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