When it is sung
Sung at Shiva puja in Maharashtra, on Mondays, on every Monday of Shravan, at Mahashivratri and at Pradosh. It is the Shiva aarti of the Marathi household and temple as Om Jai Shiv Omkara is of the north; the two are the same rite in two languages.
Full text, with meaning
Each line of the verse, with its romanisation beneath and what the verse says after it.
Verse 1
लवथवती विक्राळा ब्रह्मांडी माळा।
Lavthavti vikrala brahmandi mala
वीषे कंठ काळा त्रिनेत्री ज्वाळा॥
Vishe kanth kala trinetri jwala
लावण्यसुंदर मस्तकी बाळा।
Lavanya-sundar mastaki bala
तेथुनियां जळ निर्मळ वाहे झुळझुळां॥ १॥
Tethuniya jal nirmal vahe jhuljhula
Meaning
Trembling, terrible, with a garland of universes; the throat blackened by poison, flames in the third eye. On his head a slender crescent, beautiful — and from there the pure water flows, rippling down. Four lines, and the whole figure of Shiva is drawn: the fear, the poison, the moon, and the Ganga in his hair.
Dhrupad (the refrain)
जय देव जय देव जय श्रीशंकरा।
Jai dev jai dev jai Shri Shankara
आरती ओवाळूं तुज कर्पूरगौरा॥ धृ॥
Aarti ovalun tuj karpoor-gaura
Meaning
Victory to the god, victory to Shri Shankara. We wave the lamp before you, the one white as camphor. Karpurgaura is the name the refrain hangs on: Shiva smeared in ash, pale as burning camphor — the same substance in the aarti plate.
Verse 2
कर्पूरगौरा भोळा नयनीं विशाळा।
Karpoor-gaura bhola nayani vishala
अर्धांगी पार्वती सुमनांच्या माळा॥
Ardhangi Parvati sumananchya mala
विभुतीचें उधळण शितिकंठ नीळा।
Vibhutiche udhalan shitikanth nila
ऐसा शंकर शोभे उमावेल्हाळा॥ जय देव॥ २॥
Aisa Shankar shobhe Uma-velhala
Meaning
White as camphor, guileless, wide-eyed; Parvati as half his body, garlands of flowers. Ash flung across him, the blue-throated one — so shines Shankar, Uma’s beloved. The word bhola, innocent or simple, is the Marathi affection for a god who is easily pleased and gives without calculation.
Verse 3
देवीं दैत्यीं सागरमंथन पैं केलें।
Devi daityi sagar-manthan pai kele
त्यामाजीं अवचित हळाहळ उठिलें॥
Tyamaji avachit halahal uthile
तें त्वां असुरपणें प्राशन केलें।
Te tva asurpane prashan kele
नीळकंठ नाम प्रसिद्ध झालें॥ जय देव॥ ३॥
Nilkanth naam prasiddh jhale
Meaning
Gods and demons churned the ocean, and from it, unexpectedly, the halahala poison rose. You drank it with a demon’s daring, and the name Nilkanth — blue-throat — became famous. The verse explains the black throat of verse 1: it is not a flaw but the evidence of the one act that saved everything.
Verse 4 (closing)
व्याघ्रांबर फणिवरधर सुंदर मदनारी।
Vyaghrambar phanivar-dhar sundar Madanari
पंचानन मनमोहन मुनिजनसुखकारी॥
Panchanan manmohan munijan-sukhkari
शतकोटीचें बीज वाचे उच्चारी।
Shatkotiche beej vache uchchari
रघुकुळटिळक रामदासा अंतरीं॥ जय देव॥ ४॥
Raghukul-tilak Ramdasa antari
Meaning
Clad in tiger skin, wearing the king of serpents, beautiful, the enemy of Kama; five-faced, enchanting, the joy of sages. He speaks with his own mouth the seed of the hundred-crore verses — and the ornament of the Raghu line, Rama, is in Ramdas’s heart. The signature turns the Shiva aarti back to Rama: Shiva is pictured as the one who recites Rama’s name, and the poet asks for the same.
About this aarti
Samarth Ramdas wrote the two aartis that open and close the Marathi puja — Sukhkarta Dukhharta for Ganesha and this one for Shiva — in the same seventeenth-century Marathi and the same metre. Households that sing one usually know the other, and on a Monday in Shravan the two are sung together.
The aarti is built as a portrait that keeps correcting itself. Verse 1 is all terror: trembling, poison, fire. Verse 2 is all tenderness: bhola, wide-eyed, Uma’s beloved, wearing flowers. Verse 3 then explains how the same body carries both — the black throat is the scar of drinking the world’s poison. Verse 4 finally sets him among his ornaments and lets him speak.
Ramdas was a devotee of Rama before anything else, and the last line makes that plain. Shiva is described as the one who utters the seed of the shatkoti, the hundred-crore Ramayana, and the poet closes with Rama in his own heart. A Shiva aarti that ends on Rama is very much in the Maharashtrian tradition, where the two are not rivals.
Lavthavti is a rare word — trembling, quivering, as a flame or a tall body does — and it is the reason the aarti is remembered by its first word rather than a title. The sound of it is most of its meaning.
A note on the text
The text follows the printed Marathi Aarti Sangrah cited below (Faizpur, 2008), from the scanned copy on the Internet Archive, cross-checked against the second collection cited; scanning errors have been corrected against those copies (the scans read “त्रीनेत्री” for त्रिनेत्री, “हळाहळ” for हळाहळ with a stray vowel sign, and “टीळक” for टिळक). The two printings differ in genuine small ways: one reads ब्रह्मांडी माळा and the other ब्रह्मांडे माळा; one has the poison rising (उठिलें) and the other being found (सांपडलें); one closes रघुकुळटिळक and the other रघुतिलक. All are sung. The older orthography with anusvara and long vowels (तेथुनियां, केलें, अंतरीं) is Ramdas’s Marathi and has been kept.
Sources
- Aarti Sangrah (Marathi, Faizpur 2008) — scanned copy, Internet Archive
- Aarti Book (Marathi aarti collection) — scanned copy, Internet Archive
These texts are in the public domain. The verse is reproduced from the cited source; the English meaning and the background notes on this page are original writing.