Dharma Katha · Season 2: Navratri · Episode 74

Most books do not tell you when to read them. This one does. Near its end, the Goddess herself speaks, and she names a season. Autumn. The time of the great worship. Which is to say, this week. This is Dharma Katha, Season Two, Navratri. Episode seventy-four, the last episode of day two. In episode seventy, we heard the three short hymns many people recite before they open the Devi Mahatmya: the armour, the bolt and the pin, the Kavacham, the Argala and the Kilakam. Tonight, the book itself. Not its stories, which we are hearing through this season, but how it is read. What a reader actually does, in a home, on a morning in Navratri.

Missed the previous story? Listen to Episode 70 first.

Source note. Label: tradition, with quotations. The structure of the Devi Mahatmya, its frame story and its three acts, are from the text, as in episodes fifty-five and fifty-seven. The explanation of the count of seven hundred is the traditional one; editions explain it differently. The seven-day reading scheme is widely published, here as given by smartpuja.com; other schemes exist. The reading customs are general living tradition and vary by family and teacher. The verses from chapter twelve, on praise ending troubles, on the eighth, fourteenth and ninth days, and on the great autumn worship, were read with their translation on devimahatmyam.aurobharati.in, where they are numbered two, four, twelve and thirteen. The Kshama Prarthana verse, āvāhanaṃ na jānāmi, was read on drikpanchang.com. A Sanskrit reader should confirm the verses.

Note: this episode is narrated with an AI voice and the script was written with AI assistance. Sanskrit verses are checked against published editions; corrections are welcome.