Padukasahasra 13

May the play-dust of Padmanābha's sandals protect you— / the successive atoms [used] in fashioning / the body of Ahalyā.

O footwear of the king of Raṅgam, this dust shaken loose by your movement / is capable of quickly rendering minds free of turbid impurity, / just like the powder of the clearing-nut tree.

Free from attachment, O sandal, by means of your pollens, / certain men, whose greatness repeats that of the Grandfather, / sanctify the universe— / O friend to the lotus foot of the enemy of Madhu!

In order to release them from the demon of conceit, O footwear of the king of Raṅgam, / learned persons frequently smear the bodies / of their children / with your dust.

Taking your dust upon their heads, O sandal of the Lord of Raṅga, / the guardians of the world enter the fierce hosts of the demons / having removed their helmets.

Certain blessed men, bearing your dust upon their heads, O sandal of Keśava, / behold sattva utterly pure, / far removed even from rajas and tamas.

Though having attained the supreme station, the Creator, born from the navel, / devoutly longs for contact with your noble dust, O foot-protector of the Sovereign of Raṅgam, / O queen, yet is not born noble [in your eyes].

O sandal, by your very form of pure sattva, Hari's feet are free from dust; / let it be so: what is this, again, that through your dust / men are transformed into pure sattva?

That dust of yours, O sandal, makes soft the minds of embodied beings, / which revealed stone that had become a path / to be the sage's lawful wife.

O gem footwear, during the circumambulation of the streets / for the welfare of the world by the Puruṣa who reclines in Raṅgam, / the pollens stirred by you redden with vermilion / the hair-parting of spotless Sarasvatīs.

O gem footwear of the king of Raṅgam, adorning the crowns of the worshipful / with your dust, they who attain the position of Brahmā in course of time / dwell in the midst of the pollens of the navel-lotus.

O mother, foot-protector of Mukunda, bearing upon their heads / the tiny particles of dust from your movement, comparable to a choice powder for bewitching the mind, / [men] sanctify the universe with specks of pollen from the lotus feet.

Employed by pure intellects in the function of scented perfumed powder for the bride that is Śruti—an attainment not accessible to others— / the dust-specks shaken loose by your pacing, O foot-protector, / proclaim the beauty of Śauri's lotus-foot pollen.

O mother, gem footwear of the slayer of Mura, whose head you sanctify / at any time with your dust, / those fortunate ones in due course bathe you / with the pollen of the mandāra garland fallen from their crowns.

Covered in gray dust from roaming the streets / during the delightful grand festivals of the Lord of Raṅga, / Gaurī's consort himself, bowing down, brushes you clean, O gem sandal, / with the fringe of his elephant-hide.

Having touched the heads of those nearest who suffer from the disease of worldly existence, after first applying your own dust, / and pressing firmly, O footwear of Him who has Garuḍa on His banner, / you seem to quell the seizure of pride that is incurable by others.

When He, possessing the apparent form of a cowherd, a youth beyond boyhood, / entered the Yamunā bowers, O foot-protector, / the dust of your path set forth before Him / was like the army's dust rising before the battle of Love.

Taking refuge in the creeper-bower on the banks of the river Gaṅgā, O foot-protector, / the dust of your path stirred up, most purifying, / brings about an extraordinary, novel powdering of ashes / for Śambhu as He bows.

At the end, then, bringing without delay from Raṅgam / Him who reclines upon the serpent, O gem footwear, / you ought surely to relieve my burning fever / with the clusters of your dust, like masses of camphor powder.

O fellow-observer of dharma with the feet of the Lord of Raṅga, placing upon their heads / the honored dust of your path, / the virtuous, surpassing the path of the three aims of life, / plant their foot upon the heads of the lords of the gods.

O mother, footwear of Mādhava, when at that time you arrive in haste, / deeply attached to me, / may I touch the dust of your path / with my life-breaths rising up to depart!

When she had been reduced to such a state, while the ascetics looked on, / O footwear of Rāghava, / by specks of your dust Ahalyā herself became / the foremost among unblemished women.

O footwear of the lotus-eyed Lord, I see the dust of your path / scattered about by your haste in approaching the devotee, / setting forth, as it were, to drink up / the ocean of worldly existence.

The five weapons of Śauri are a mere ornament, / because, O gem footwear, / these dust clouds of yours, pervading the directions, / quell the rising dust of enemy armies.

Through whose power the stone, having attained a soft transformation, / was recovered by Gautama as his lawful wife, / that dust of yours, O sandal, averting the fear of rebirth, / quells the passionate attachment of beings.

Reciting the story of Rāma at the passing of the night, / foremost among the sons of Kuśika, O sandal, meditate upon / regions of the Daṇḍaka forest where the wives of sages were suddenly brought forth / by your dust adhering to the fragments of stone.

Adorning the earth with the dust of [thy] auspicious paths, / pouring forth aims of human life charming in their fruition, / thou, O sandal of the Lord of Raṅgam, adorable to the world, / art an eternal wish-granting cow to those who have come for refuge.

Stirred by the wind at the times of the Lord of Raṅgam's strolls, / thy pollen-dust, pervading the universe, O sandal, / continually clears away the cloud of latent impressions' dust / for people confounded by the perilous paths of sense-objects.

May we constantly worship without obstacle the sandals of the Sovereign of Raṅgam, which sever every fault, / praised by multitudes of the Vedas; / of which [sandals] that very lineage born from the primal lotus, by four, five, and six [heads], / bears on its crowns the row of earth-dust sanctified by their movement.

That dust beyond the primal matter surely would not have crossed / even the Lord's supreme abode, / much less my heart, / if thou indeed, O sandal, did not exist.

Thus ends the thirteenth section, the Section on Pollen-Dust, in the Thousand [Verses] on the Sandals of the Holy Raṅganātha composed by the holy Vedāntācārya, the Lion among poets and logicians, the master of all systems, the venerable Veṅkaṭanātha.

14. Section on Sound (100)