12-4 The Sri-suJcta, or Litany to Fortune. [No. 2. 



compositions to which it belongs. In legal treatises its use is pre- 



Tlie first book of the Vishnu-pnr'iua^ ninth chapter, has these words, in the 1 

 narration of the churning of the ocean : 



* Subsequently, seated on an expanded lotus beaming with brilliancy, the god- 

 dess S'ri, bearing a lotus, emerged from that sea of milk. Joyfully did the great 

 sages laud her with the S'ri-suktaJ 1 



According to the commentator, who repeats its commencement, that hymn 

 was the very one with which we are concerned. No one can know more about 

 the matter than he knew : and he can have known nothing. 



Another melody addressed to S'ri, but claiming Indra for its author, will be 

 found in the same chapter of the Vishnu purdna that has just been quoted from, 

 beginning with the hundred and sixteenth stanza, and ending with the hundred 

 and thirty-first. 



Still another set of verses, eulogistic of Lakshmf, extending to only seven cou- 

 plets, is cited, agreeably to one version, in the Dana-Jcamalakara and elsewhere. 

 Colebrooke has translated them in his Miscellaneous Essays, Vol. I., pp. 179 

 and 180. Here is the first of them : 



^t ^rctft: sr?^rT*tf sit ^ ^iNrarfsrat i 



But of much more customary occurrence than any of the before mentioned 

 poems is the Lakshmt-hridaya-stotra, in one hundred and six stanzas. It pur- 

 ports, in its colophon, to be derived from the Uttara-Mnda of the Atharva- 

 rahasya, whatever that work may be. The introductory lines are subjoined : 



' To Lakshmi — identical with supreme prosperity ; lustrous as pure gold ; 

 splendour incorporate ; of apparel like gold ; whose person glitters with all man- 

 ner of embellishments j bearing a citron, a golden vase, and an aureate lotus j 

 the primaeval energy ; the universal genitrix j reposing on the left thigh of 

 Yishnu — I make obeisance.' 



