When it is sung
Sung at every Ganesh puja in Maharashtra, immediately after Sukhkarta Dukhharta — the two are treated as one sequence. It runs every evening of Ganeshotsav, from Ganesh Chaturthi on 14 September 2026 to the visarjan on Anant Chaturdashi, 25 September 2026, and at home Ganpati installations of one and a half, five or seven days.
- Ganesh Chaturthi
Ganpati sthapana; sung at the first evening aarti
- Anant Chaturdashi
Visarjan day — the last aarti before immersion
Full text, with meaning
Each line of the verse, with its romanisation beneath and what the verse says after it.
Verse 1
शेंदुर लाल चढ़ायो अच्छा गजमुखको।
Shendur laal chadhayo achha gajmukh ko
दोंदिल लाल बिराजे सुत गौरीहरको॥
Dondil laal biraje sut Gauri-Har ko
हाथ लिये गुड़लड्डू साई सुरवरको।
Haath liye gud-laddu saai survar ko
महिमा कहे न जाये लागत हूँ पदको॥ १॥
Mahima kahe na jaaye laagat hoon pad ko
Meaning
Red vermilion has been smeared on the elephant-faced one, and the pot-bellied son of Gauri and Shiva sits there in red. In his hand is a jaggery laddoo — this is the lord of the gods. His greatness cannot be told, so I simply fall at his feet. The verse is a picture before it is a prayer: colour, belly, sweet, and then surrender.
Dhrupad (the refrain)
जय जय जी गणराज विद्यासुखदाता।
Jai jai ji Ganaraj vidya-sukh-data
धन्य तुम्हारे दर्शन मेरा मन रमता॥ धृ॥
Dhanya tumhare darshan mera man ramta
Meaning
Victory to you, Ganaraj, giver of learning and of joy. Blessed is the sight of you — my mind comes to rest in it. This is the line the whole room sings back after every verse.
Verse 2
अष्टौ सिद्धि दासी संकटको बैरी।
Ashtau siddhi daasi sankat ko bairi
विघ्नविनाशक मंगलमूरत अधिकारी॥
Vighna-vinashak mangal-murat adhikari
कोटी सूरजप्रकाश ऐसी छबि तेरी।
Koti suraj-prakash aisi chhabi teri
गंडस्थलमदमस्तक झूले शशिबिहारी॥ २॥
Gandasthal-mad-mastak jhoole shashi-bihari
Meaning
The eight siddhis wait on him as servants; he is the enemy of trouble, the destroyer of obstacles, the auspicious form with the authority to act. Your radiance is the light of ten million suns; ichor runs on the temples of the moon-crested one as his head sways. The image is of a tusker in musth — power that is barely contained, and yet benevolent.
Verse 3
संतत संपत सबही भरपूर पावे।
Santat sampat sabhi bharpoor paave
ऐसे तुम महाराज मोको अति भावे॥
Aise tum Maharaj moko ati bhaave
गोसावीनंदन निशिदिन गुण गावे॥ ३॥
Gosavi-nandan nishidin gun gaave
Meaning
Whoever comes to you receives lasting prosperity, in full. Such a lord, Maharaj, pleases me greatly. Gosavi Nandan sings your qualities night and day. The final line is the poet’s signature — the bhanita that Marathi and Hindi devotional verse uses in place of a byline.
About this aarti
In Maharashtra the Ganesh aarti is not one song but a fixed sequence: Sukhkarta Dukhharta first, then Shendur Lal Chadhayo, then the shlokas of Ghalin Lotangan to close. Households sing the three without a pause between them, so many people know the second aarti only as “the one after Sukhkarta”.
It stands out in that sequence for its language. Sukhkarta Dukhharta and Ghalin Lotangan are Marathi and Sanskrit; Shendur Lal is in a Hindi that shows its Braj roots — chadhayo, biraje, moko, bhaave — the register of north Indian devotional verse. That it became a fixture of Marathi worship says something about how freely the bhakti traditions borrowed from each other.
The closing verse names its author as Gosavi Nandan, “son of a Gosavi”, which is all that is known of him. The aarti is old enough to appear in every printed Marathi aarti collection and carries no known date; it is traditional and public domain.
What the text asks for is unusually modest. Verse 1 gives up on describing his greatness and just bows; the refrain wants only to keep looking; verse 3 promises prosperity to the visitor but the singer himself asks for nothing. It is an aarti about the pleasure of being in the room.
A note on the text
The text follows the printed Marathi aarti collection cited below, from the scanned copy on the Internet Archive, with obvious scanning errors corrected against the same copy: the scan renders गुड़लड्डू as “गुडलहू”, अष्टौ सिद्धि as “अष्ठो सिध्दी”, बैरी as “बेरी” and दोंदिल as “दोंदिलळ”. Two genuine variants are worth knowing. Most sung versions open the third verse with an extra line, भावभगत से कोई शरणागत आवे (“whoever comes for refuge with devotion”), which this printing omits; and the refrain is often sung धन्य तुम्हारो दर्शन rather than तुम्हारे. Both are correct; a household sings the version it inherited.
Sources
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.