Padukasahasra 1

knowing that the security and prosperity of all the worlds rests in you, / may that sage born from the earth's ear grant me divine speech.

Which rests without distinction upon my head, low though it is, / as well as on the high crest of the Vedas— / that pair of sandals of Raṅgapati, first celebrated in song / by Prācetasa and others, I shall praise.

My words attain equality with the speech of the one born of an anthill / from resting upon the gem-studded sandals of Mukunda; / what difference would there be from the water of the Yamunā / for street water fallen into the stream of the Gaṅgā?

I make a certain petition to you beforehand, O sporting sandal of Raṅgapati, seized as I am by fear; / the virtuous, free from malice, who are able to speak of what is good and bad,

may touch with compassionate hearts your praise in order to reveal it.

Indeed, now you engage me, even though lacking in faith, in your own praise, / O gem-studded sandal; / the divine Raṅgapati is the authority in this matter, / just as you are for his two lotus feet, O queen.

You alone support that [Lord] upon whom the universe rests, and who is its supreme goal; / you provide a radiant, supreme gait for his stride,

and you grant [the ultimate] path. How is it that you, whose greatness is hard to understand even for Druhiṇa and Hara, / are an object of praise for petty poets, O gem-studded sandal of Kaṃsāri?

How many virtuous ones, their greatness honoured for wealth of learning and wisdom, / whose words remove the itch in the ear cavities [of scholars], praise you! / But I, being small, babble much here; nonetheless,

what little [good] is in this is known to depend on you, O foot-protector of the Lord of Raṅgam's realm!

In that I praise you, O protector of the foot of the Lord of the three ages, from that

what loss of majesty is there to you? But to me there is boundless fortune: / let the sacred celestial river be licked at will by a dog; / what happens to it? He, however, is instantly freed from burning thirst.

My speech—whose five or six words are produced in an instant due to limited intellect— / directed toward you, an object for the efforts of celebrated poets, / to whom on the earth's surface would it not be laughable, O supporter of Hari's foot, / like a puff of breath from a mouth shaken repeatedly by a whirlwind?

Although the superiority of the object and my own inferiority are beyond doubt, / made garrulous by audacity born of the majesty of devotion which has obstacles to the rise of joy,

the poet Veṅkaṭeśvara, with arrangements of words that undertake the description of the footwear of the Lord of Raṅgam, / enters the vanguard among those who relish jesting.

O jewel sandal of the Lord of Raṅgam! As I desire to praise you, / may there swiftly expand spontaneously eloquent verses that produce doubt whether they are a flood of nectar that is your chiming, / emboldened with unbridled flow that strikes fear into the swift waters of the Gaṅgā in the matted hair of the moon-crested [Śiva] tossed about in admiration!

For those dwelling between the Himālaya and Nala's bridge, the crest-ornament is the sandals worshipped by Bharata;

from the nature of the ascetics of the Himālaya mountain, I am not excluded from all the desires of poets.

O sandal of the Sovereign of Raṅgam, praising you without fear out of delusion, / though you are beyond the reach of the beginningless mass of words, / I shall delight the Lord with amusement.

May the speech of the poet Veṅkaṭeśvara, resorting to various modes, / serve you today like a dancing girl, / O jewel sandal of Raṅgapati!

Indeed, by your grace, an ocean of boundless compassion, / I could even compose a work of a hundred thousand [verses]; / nevertheless, O sandal of Hari, this brief praise is fitting, / so that it may be an illustration of a fraction of your multitude of virtues.

Making my eloquent verse imitate your own sound, / may you be attentive in my mind and in my speech, / so that Raṅganātha, completely freed from sleep, / listens in assembly alongside Lakṣmī, O sandal!

This praise offered to you, O footwear, becomes [an offering] at the foot of Raṅganātha, / like worship performed upon it rests on the heads of the bowing celestials.

Thus ends the first section, the "Introductory Section", in the Thousand [Verses] on the Sandals of Śrī Raṅganātha, composed by the Lion among poets and logicians, master of all systems, the venerable Veṅkaṭanātha, the venerable Vedāntācārya.

2. Section on the Designation (10)

I bow to that sage devoted to Viṣṇu's feet, and to that sandal,