Durgācandrakalāstuti

The Durgacandrakalastuti is a very brief work consisting of sixteen verses, all of which are in the vasantatilaka meter. There are also two framing stanza, one at the beginning and one at the end, both in the anustubh meter. Brevity is paired with simplicity in this work. The verses are in easy Sanskrit, with no unusual grammatical forms or syntactic constructions. The work is very straightforward and lacks complex figuration. Appayya Diksita, the scholar who had such a profound impact on the alamkara discourse in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has, by and large, refrained here from the use of ornaments of speech. The work is accompanied by an autocommentary that explains its plan: the first 8 or so verses sum up the Devīmāhātmya, and the remaining verses sum events from other sources on the goddess. the Varāhapurāṇa (verses 9–11), the Harivamśa (12–14), and the Bhāgavata (15–16), before concluding with a verse alluding to the relevant portion of a Vedic text, the Samavidhibrahmana (17). This design follows the expressed intention of showing that the Goddess won the praise of the trinity of Brahma (in the Devīmāhātmya), Śiva (in the Varāhapurāṇa), and Viṣṇu (in the Harivaṃśa and the Bhāgavata).