Kali Mantra

What the Kali Mantra is

The Kali mantra most people mean is Om Krim Kalikayai Namah, a four-word salutation to Kalika, the goddess Kali, built around her seed syllable Krim. Kalikayai is the name in the dative case, so the line reads "Om, Krim, to Kalika, salutation". The name itself joins two Sanskrit words that sound alike, kala for time and kala for black. Two companions are printed with it. The Kali Gayatri follows the three-step pattern of the deity Gayatris in the Mahanarayana Upanishad, the last book of the Taittiriya Aranyaka: we come to know (vidmahe), we meditate (dhimahi), may she impel (prachodayat). It names her Mahakali and the one who dwells in the cremation ground. The third text is a single couplet, Jayanti Mangala Kali, a couplet near the head of the Argala Stotram, one of the short hymns read before the Devi Mahatmya. In it Kali is the third of eleven titles, between Mangala and Bhadrakali, and the couplet closes on Svaha and Svadha, the words spoken over offerings.

A seed syllable hidden in camphor

No single moment of composition is told for this mantra. What the Tantric tradition keeps instead is a riddle. The Karpuradi Stotra, a hymn to Dakshina Kalika, opens by telling the devotee how to form her seed. Take the word karpura, camphor, its first verse says; drop the middle and final consonants and the vowels, then add the long i and the nasal dot. Only k and r remain, and with the long i and the bindu they become Krim, the syllable at the centre of Om Krim Kalikayai Namah. The commentary on the hymn reads the dropped letters as the qualities of rajas and tamas, so that only the sattvic part is left, and it cites the Kalikahridaya on worshipping Kali as the seed Krim itself. The verse says that those who recite this seed speak with ease in verse or in prose. Across its first five verses the same hymn hides the 22-syllable mantra of Dakshina Kali, with the seeds Krim, Hum and Hrim, the words dakshine kalike and a closing svaha. Tradition treats that longer form as a vidya passed from teacher to student, which is why it is described here and not printed. The short salutation was never kept back in that way. Kali Puja in Bengal, also called Shyama Puja, spread in the eighteenth century under patrons such as King Krishnachandra of Nadia.

The mantra, in six scripts

Kali Mantra lyrics in full

The root salutation, the Kali Gayatri and the Jayanti Mangala Kali verse. The 22-syllable Dakshina Kali mantra, given at initiation, is not printed.

All 3 verses, in Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and English, each with its meaning. Choose a script:

The syllable people get wrong

In the Kali Gayatri, śmaśānavāsinyai (dweller in the cremation ground) begins with two palatal sibilants: say "shma-SHAA-na-vaa-sin-yai", with a soft sh each time and a long middle a, not "smashan".

When the Kali Mantra is chanted

Weekday. Friday

Festival. Kali Puja (Shyama Puja), on the Diwali new moon

Questions