Shuklaambara Dharam vishnum – Learn Sanskrit through Slokas

As we are aware, Sanskrit has been playing a significant role in our Sanathana philosophy for several millennia. Sanskrit literature not only encompasses philosophical and religious texts, but also includes poetry, music, drama and scientific texts. In fact, Sanskrit was once commonly spoken across ancient and medieval India. While it continues to be chanted during ceremonies and rituals, the usage otherwise is unfortunately dwindling. Learning Sanskrit gives us the benefit of reading our scriptures in the original tongue and gets us the opportunity to speak the language of heavenly beings. Through this series, I am attempting to go over some of the basic words of the language by recalling some of the popular verses. Hope this kindles the interest in you to learn it further.

Note: This series is neither to explain the inner meanings of slokas nor to impart expert level knowledge in the language. This is only a humble attempt to project the simple meaning of verses and thereby share a few words in Sanskrit. Please reach out to experts to gain further knowledge on the language.

Today’s sloka is dedicated to Lord Vishnu and must be familiar to most of you:

shuklaambara dharam vishnum shashivarnam chaturbhujam
prasanna vadhanam dhyaayeth sarva vighnopashaantaye

Let’s try to understand the word by word meaning of the above verse:

shukla ambara dharam

• ‘shukla’ means white. Some of you might have heard of shukla paksha which is the fortnight following no moon day (Amavasya). The other fortnight is ‘krishna paksha‘ where krishna means ‘black‘. So literally, Krishna means ‘The Black one’!
• ‘ambara’ means garment here. Refer to Pithaambara which means yellow dress (‘pitha’ is yellow). Lord Vishnu is referred to as Pithaambaradhaari.
• ‘dharam’ means the wearer of (‘bearer of’). dhara means to bear. That’s why mother earth is called ‘Dharaa‘ or ‘Dharini‘ (the bearer of  all of us).

To summarise, shuklambaradharam will mean ‘ the wearer of white clothing’

vishnum

• ‘vishnum’ indicates Lord Vishnu (comes from the word vyaapa  – to pervade – Vishnu – ‘all pervading’)

shashivarnam

As we know ‘varna‘ is colour. shashi means ‘the moon’ (Shashidharais Shashi+Dhara = ‘the bearer of moon’, Lord Shiva’). So shashivarnam means the colour of moon.

chaturbhujam

‘Chatur‘ is four (think of Vinayaka Chaturthi – 4th day of the fortnight) and ‘bhuja’ is shoulders or arms. This would mean possessor of  four arms

prasanna vadhanam

‘prasanna‘ indicates happiness (Actually ‘prasannaa‘ is a feminine name but we see some males having that name). vadhanam is face (Gajavadhana is Lord Ganesha). This means the possessor of happy/peaceful face

dhyaayeth

‘dhyaayeth‘ – to pray; mediate (think of dhyaanam)

sarva vigna upashanthaye

‘sarva‘ is all. ‘vigna‘ is obstacles (vigneshwara – Lord Ganesha) and upashaanthaye is to remove/eliminate.

Based on the above explanation, the literal meaning for the above verse would be, “I pray to the all-pervading Lord Vishnu, who is wearing white colored clothes, who has four hands, who has a peaceful face for the removal of all obstacles.”

As mentioned above, all slokas have a deep inner meaning which goes beyond the semantics of the verse and is also beyond the scope of this series. Please reach out to your Gurus to understand the same.

Hope you like this series. If you have any feedback, please share them in the comments section.