Bhavani Ashtakam
भवान्यष्टकम्
What is the Bhavani Ashtakam?
Bhavani Ashtakam is an eight-verse Sanskrit hymn composed by Adi Shankaracharya, addressed to Goddess Bhavani, a form of Parvati and Durga. Each verse strips away every worldly claim to safety – father, mother, wealth, learning, even merit – and ends on the same line, gatis tvam gatis tvam tvam eka bhavani: you are my refuge, you alone, Bhavani. It is a hymn of total surrender rather than praise, traditionally chanted when nothing else is left to hold onto.
Adi Shankaracharya did not write the Bhavani Ashtakam to praise the Goddess’s beauty or her weapons. He wrote it to admit he had nothing else. Verse after verse lists what a person normally leans on – a father, a mother, a trade, a scrap of learning – and crosses each one out. By the time the poem reaches its refrain for the eighth time, gatis tvam gatis tvam tvam eka bhavani, it has stopped sounding like a formula and started sounding like the only sentence left to say. At under three minutes, it is short enough to keep close on a day when nothing else holds.
Bhavani Ashtakam Lyrics
Roman transliteration on top, Devanagari below it. Tap Meaning under any verse for the English sense, or use A / A+ / A++ to enlarge the lyric text.
na tato na mata na bandhur na data
na putro na putri na bhrityo na bharta
na jaya na vidya na vrittir mamaiva
gatis tvam gatis tvam tvam eka bhavani
न तातो न माता न बन्धुर्न दाता
न पुत्रो न पुत्री न भृत्यो न भर्ता
न जाया न विद्या न वृत्तिर्ममैव
गतिस्त्वं गतिस्त्वं त्वमेका भवानि
Meaning
No father, no mother, no brother, no giver. No son, no daughter, no servant, no husband. No wife, no learning, no livelihood of my own – you alone, Bhavani, are where I turn.
bhavabdhav apare maha duhkha bhiru
prapata prakami pralobhi pramattah
ku samsara pasha prabaddhah sadaham
gatis tvam gatis tvam tvam eka bhavani
भवाब्धावपारे महादुःखभीरु
प्रपात प्रकामी प्रलोभी प्रमत्तः
कुसंसारपाशप्रबद्धः सदाहं
गतिस्त्वं गतिस्त्वं त्वमेका भवानि
Meaning
In this shoreless ocean of worldly existence, terrified of its great sorrow, I have fallen – driven by craving, greed and excess, always bound in a wretched world’s noose – you alone, Bhavani, are where I turn.
na janami danam na cha dhyana yogam
na janami tantram na cha stotra mantram
na janami pujam na cha nyasa yogam
gatis tvam gatis tvam tvam eka bhavani
न जानामि दानं न च ध्यानयोगं
न जानामि तन्त्रं न च स्तोत्रमन्त्रम्
न जानामि पूजां न च न्यासयोगं
गतिस्त्वं गतिस्त्वं त्वमेका भवानि
Meaning
I do not know charity, nor the discipline of meditation. I do not know tantric rite, nor hymn, nor mantra. I do not know worship, nor how to place the deity within myself – you alone, Bhavani, are where I turn.
na janami punyam na janami tirtham
na janami muktim layam va kadachit
na janami bhaktim vratam vapi matah
gatis tvam gatis tvam tvam eka bhavani
न जानामि पुण्यं न जानामि तीर्थं
न जानामि मुक्तिं लयं वा कदाचित्
न जानामि भक्तिं व्रतं वापि मातः
गतिस्त्वं गतिस्त्वं त्वमेका भवानि
Meaning
I do not know merit, I do not know pilgrimage. I do not know liberation or dissolution, not even by chance. I do not know devotion or vows, O Mother – you alone, Bhavani, are where I turn.
kukarmi kusangi kubuddhih kudasah
kulachara hinah kadachara linah
kudrishtih kuvakya prabandhah sadaham
gatis tvam gatis tvam tvam eka bhavani
कुकर्मी कुसङ्गी कुबुद्धिः कुदासः
कुलाचारहीनः कदाचारलीनः
कुदृष्टिः कुवाक्यप्रबन्धः सदाहं
गतिस्त्वं गतिस्त्वं त्वमेका भवानि
Meaning
A doer of wrong, keeper of bad company, of a spoiled mind, a servant to what degrades me. Without right conduct, sunk always in wrong ways. My gaze ill-intentioned, my speech an unbroken run of harsh words – you alone, Bhavani, are where I turn.
prajesham ramesham mahesham suresham
dinesham nishitheshvaram va kadachit
na janami chanyat sadaham sharanye
gatis tvam gatis tvam tvam eka bhavani
प्रजेशं रमेशं महेशं सुरेशं
दिनेशं निशीथेश्वरं वा कदाचित्
न जानामि चान्यत् सदाहं शरण्ये
गतिस्त्वं गतिस्त्वं त्वमेका भवानि
Meaning
The lord of creatures, the lord of Ramaa, the great lord, the lord of the gods, the lord of day, the lord of night – whichever, whenever – I know none of them apart from you. Always, O refuge, you alone, Bhavani, are where I turn.
vivade vishade pramade pravase
jale chanale parvate shatrumadhye
aranye sharanye sada mam prapahi
gatis tvam gatis tvam tvam eka bhavani
विवादे विषादे प्रमादे प्रवासे
जले चानले पर्वते शत्रुमध्ये
अरण्ये शरण्ये सदा मां प्रपाहि
गतिस्त्वं गतिस्त्वं त्वमेका भवानि
Meaning
In dispute, in despair, in negligence, in a foreign land. In water and in fire, on a mountain, in the midst of enemies. In the wilderness, O refuge, protect me always – you alone, Bhavani, are where I turn.
anatho daridro jara roga yukto
maha kshina dinah sada jadya vaktrah
vipattau pravishtah pranashtah sadaham
gatis tvam gatis tvam tvam eka bhavani
अनाथो दरिद्रो जरारोगयुक्तो
महाक्षीणदीनः सदा जाड्यवक्त्रः
विपत्तौ प्रविष्टः प्रनष्टः सदाहं
गतिस्त्वं गतिस्त्वं त्वमेका भवानि
Meaning
Without protector, without means, worn down by age and sickness. Utterly weak and wretched, my face always dulled with weariness. Fallen into calamity, lost – you alone, Bhavani, are where I turn.
Meaning and Significance
The Bhavani Ashtakam does not build an argument the way many stotras do; it repeats one. Eight times Shankaracharya names everything a person ordinarily depends on, then crosses it out, and eight times he lands on the same twelve syllables: gatis tvam gatis tvam tvam eka bhavani, you are my refuge, you alone. The repetition is the point. A devotee is not meant to hear it once and understand it; the line is meant to be said until it becomes true.
The first verse empties out the family and the household in one breath: no father, no mother, no brother, no giver, no son, no daughter, no servant, no husband, no wife, no learning, no livelihood. Nothing here is presented as bad. A father, a wife, a trade are ordinary and often good things to have. Shankaracharya’s point is narrower: none of them is a refuge in the sense the word demands, something that holds when everything else gives way.
Verse two moves from relationships to the self, describing a person swept along in the shoreless ocean of worldly existence, afraid, driven by craving, greed and excess, tied always in what the verse calls a wretched world’s noose. Verses three and four turn the same emptying onto religious life itself – no charity, no meditation, no tantric rite, no hymn or mantra, no pilgrimage, not even devotion or vows to point to. This is unusual for a devotional hymn. Most stotras list what the devotee has done for the deity. Shankaracharya lists what he has not done, and offers the gap itself.
Verse five is the plainest confession in the poem: bad company, bad conduct, a wandering gaze, a harsh tongue. Verse six widens the lens to every other god a person might turn to instead – the lord of creatures, the lord of Lakshmi, the great lord Shiva, the lord of the gods, the sun, the moon – and sets them all aside, not out of disrespect, but because none of them is the one being addressed here. Verse seven asks for protection in the specific situations where fear actually shows up: in dispute, in despair, in a foreign land, in fire and water, on a mountain, in the middle of enemies. Verse eight closes on old age, sickness and ruin, the condition the whole hymn has been describing all along, finally stated without any softening.
Why Bhavani, and why this refrain
Bhavani is Parvati in her most approachable aspect, the Goddess as the ground of existence itself rather than in any single fierce or gentle form, a name that sits comfortably beside Goddess Parvati’s wider identity. She is worshipped across Maharashtra and the Deccan, most famously as Tulja Bhavani at the Tulja Bhavani temple in Tuljapur, the kuladevi Chhatrapati Shivaji turned to before his campaigns. The refrain’s grammar is worth sitting with: gatih is not just shelter from rain. It is closer to the way, the only direction left to move in once every other direction has been named and ruled out.
How to Chant the Bhavani Ashtakam
- Read the meaning before you chant – Look at what the first verse actually says – no father, no mother, no refuge of your own – before the Sanskrit starts moving fast. The repetition in the refrain works far better once you already know what you are repeating.
- Keep the four-line shape – Every verse runs four lines to the same refrain. Pause briefly at the end of each line rather than running straight through to gatis tvam – the pause is where the meaning has room to land.
- Let the doubled refrain slow you down – Gatis tvam repeats twice inside the same line before tvam eka bhavani closes it. Do not rush past the second gatis tvam – the repetition is doing more work than the first one.
- Move through all eight verses in one sitting – The Ashtakam is built to be said whole. Save any reflection on structure or meaning for afterward; while chanting, let one verse’s ending run straight into the next verse’s opening line.
- Sit for a moment after the eighth verse – The final verse is the plainest admission of helplessness in the whole poem. Give yourself one quiet breath before standing up, rather than closing the page or moving straight to the next task.
What Are the Benefits of Chanting?
Tradition treats the Bhavani Ashtakam less as a wish list and more as a rehearsal – saying out loud, in a calm setting, what a person might otherwise only feel in a crisis.
- Names helplessness before it arrives: Chanting it on an ordinary day means the words are already familiar if a genuinely hard day shows up later. You are not reaching for a new idea under pressure – you are reaching for a sentence you already know by heart.
- Loosens the grip of self-reliance: The hymn’s entire structure argues against carrying your own protection alone. Saying it daily wears down the reflex to solve every problem by yourself before it has even become one.
- Fits into a short window: Eight verses at a steady, unhurried pace run under three minutes, so it survives mornings that have no room left for a longer sadhana.
- Builds familiarity with Devi worship: The vocabulary repeats from verse to verse – gatis tvam, sadaham, kadachit, na janami – so regular chanting wears the Sanskrit down to something recognizable without any separate study.
- Keeps a connection to Tulja Bhavani alive: For anyone who has visited Tuljapur or grown up with Bhavani as a family deity, the hymn is a way of carrying that connection into daily life instead of leaving it behind at the temple gate.
- Traditional merit: Devotional tradition holds that reciting Shankaracharya’s own words of surrender carries something of his surrender along with it – not as a shortcut past the work, but as good company for attempting it.
Who Composed the Bhavani Ashtakam?
Adi Shankaracharya, the 8th-century philosopher who consolidated Advaita Vedanta into a coherent school, is credited with the Bhavani Ashtakam. He is better known for dense philosophical works like the Brahma Sutra Bhashya and for founding the four mathas that still anchor Hindu monastic life, but he also wrote a substantial body of devotional stotras – hymns to Shiva, Vishnu, Ganesha and the Goddess in her many forms – and the Bhavani Ashtakam is among the shortest and most direct of them.
The gap between his philosophical writing and a hymn like this one is smaller than it looks. Advaita’s central claim is that the individual self has no separate reality apart from the absolute; the Bhavani Ashtakam makes something close to the same claim in devotional language, stripping away every identity – son, husband, scholar, ascetic – that the self usually hides behind, verse by verse, until only the refrain is left standing. It has circulated in stotra collections for centuries as one of the shorter ashtakams attributed to Shankaracharya, alongside better known hymns like the Kanakadhara Stotram and the Annapurna Stotram, and its authorship has not attracted the kind of dispute that surrounds some longer texts in the wider Shankaracharya corpus.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Bhavani Ashtakam?
Bhavani Ashtakam is an eight-verse Sanskrit hymn composed by Adi Shankaracharya, addressed to Goddess Bhavani, a form of Parvati and Durga. Each verse strips away every worldly claim to safety – father, mother, wealth, learning, even merit – and ends on the same line, gatis tvam gatis tvam tvam eka bhavani: you are my refuge, you alone, Bhavani. It is a hymn of total surrender rather than praise, traditionally chanted when nothing else is left to hold onto.
Who wrote the Bhavani Ashtakam?
Adi Shankaracharya, the 8th-century philosopher who systematized Advaita Vedanta, is credited with composing it. Alongside his commentaries and philosophical treatises, he wrote numerous devotional stotras to Shiva, Vishnu, Ganesha and the Goddess, and the Bhavani Ashtakam is one of the shortest and plainest-spoken among them.
How many verses does the Bhavani Ashtakam have?
Eight verses, which is what makes it an ashtakam. Every one of the eight ends on the same refrain, gatis tvam gatis tvam tvam eka bhavani. Unlike some Shankaracharya stotras, no phalashruti verse describing the hymn’s fruit is attached in the standard published editions.
What does gatis tvam gatis tvam tvam eka bhavani mean?
It means roughly you are my refuge, you are my refuge, you alone are my refuge, Bhavani. Gatih carries the sense of a way forward or a place to go, not just shelter from harm, so the line reads less like a request for protection and more like a statement that only one direction is left.
Who is Bhavani?
Bhavani is a name for the Goddess as the source and ground of existence, a form of Parvati and closely identified with Durga. She is worshipped throughout Maharashtra and the Deccan and is enshrined most famously as Tulja Bhavani at Tuljapur, the family deity Chhatrapati Shivaji turned to before his campaigns.
What is the central theme of the Bhavani Ashtakam?
Complete surrender in the face of total helplessness. Each verse denies the devotee any other resource – family, wealth, learning, even religious merit – and offers that emptiness itself to the Goddess. It reads closer to a confession than a hymn of praise.
When should you chant the Bhavani Ashtakam?
Early morning or evening are the traditional times, though devotees also reach for it in moments of genuine distress, since its subject is helplessness rather than celebration. Tuesdays, Fridays and Navaratri are commonly kept for it.
Is the Bhavani Ashtakam difficult to memorize?
Not especially. Each verse is four lines with a repeating four-word refrain, and the vocabulary across verses overlaps heavily – na janami, sadaham, kadachit recur throughout. Most regular chanters find the whole eight verses become familiar within a few weeks of daily recitation.
Can anyone chant the Bhavani Ashtakam?
Yes. It carries no initiation requirement and no restricted mantra syllables. It is a public devotional text that has circulated for centuries and is commonly printed in stotra collections alongside Shankaracharya’s other hymns.
॥ इति श्रीमदादिशङ्कराचार्यविरचितं भवान्यष्टकं सम्पूर्णम् ॥