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- Ghalin
- Ghalin Lotangan (Namdev)
घालीन लोटांगण, वंदीन चरण।डोळ्यांनी पाहीन रूप तुझे।प्रेमें आलिंगिन, आनंदे पूजिन।भावें ओवाळीन, म्हणे नामा॥
ghālīna loṭāṅgaṇa, vandīna caraṇa।ḍoḷyānnī pāhīna rūpa tujhe।preme āligina, ānande pūjina।bhāve ovāḷīna, mhaṇe nāmā॥
I shall prostrate myself full-length, and bow at your feet. I shall gaze upon your form with my own eyes. With love I shall embrace you, with joy I shall worship you, and with devotion I shall wave the lamp before you — so says Nama.
- Tvameva
- Tvameva Mata (Sanskrit)
त्वमेव माता च पिता त्वमेव।त्वमेव बन्धुश्च सखा त्वमेव।त्वमेव विद्या द्रविणं त्वमेव।त्वमेव सर्वं मम देवदेव॥
tvameva mātā ca pitā tvameva।tvameva bandhuśca sakhā tvameva।tvameva vidyā draviṇaṃ tvameva।tvameva sarvaṃ mama devadeva॥
You alone are my mother, and you alone my father; you alone are my kinsman, and you alone my friend. You alone are my learning, and you alone my wealth; you alone are everything to me, O God of gods.
- Kayena
- Kayena Vacha (Sanskrit)
कायेन वाचा मनसेन्द्रियैर्वा।बुद्ध्यात्मना वा प्रकृतेः स्वभावात्।करोमि यद्यत्सकलं परस्मै।नारायणायेति समर्पयामि॥
kāyena vācā manasendriyairvā।buddhyātmanā vā prakṛteḥ svabhāvāt।karomi yadyatsakalaṃ parasmai।nārāyaṇāyeti samarpayāmi॥
Whatever I do — by body, by speech, by mind and the senses, by intellect, by the self, or simply by the nature I was born with — all of it, whatever it may be, I offer up: this, I say, is for Narayana.
Overview
Ghalin Lotangan is not an aarti to any single deity. It is the short prayer set traditionally sung to close a Marathi aarti sequence, after the aarti or aartis to whichever deity was actually being worshipped that day. In many Maharashtrian households it follows a Ganesh aarti such as Sukhkarta Dukhharta, but it closes the worship of Devi, Vitthal, or any other deity just as readily — none of its own lines name one.
The set brings together three short, independently-authored pieces that Marathi aarti sangraha (aarti collection) booklets print and sing back to back: an opening Marathi verse of prostration and embrace, traditionally attributed to the Varkari saint-poet Namdev, followed directly by two Sanskrit shlokas of surrender. The movement across the three is from devotion to surrender — from prostrating, gazing, embracing, and worshipping, to handing over the day’s actions of body, speech, and mind entirely. The final line of the closing shloka does name Narayana specifically as the one everything is offered to, even though the set as a whole is sung without regard to which deity’s aarti came before it.
Origin and source
The opening verse, beginning “Ghalin lotangan, vandin charan,” is traditionally attributed to Namdev, the thirteenth-century Varkari saint-poet and close associate of Dnyaneshwar. It closes with the self-reference “mhane Nama” (“so says Nama”), the same first-person-signature convention used throughout the Varkari sant tradition’s abhangs and ovis — the same device Samarth Ramdas uses with “dasa ramacha” in Sukhkarta Dukhharta.
The two Sanskrit shlokas that follow are older, and independent of Namdev’s verse. “Tvameva mata cha pita tvameva” is a Sanskrit verse of surrender found in the Skanda Purana; because it names no particular deity, it circulates widely across Hindu devotional practice as a general closing prayer, well beyond any one sampradaya. “Kayena vacha manasendriyairva” matches, word for word, verse 38 of the Mukundamala, a Sanskrit hymn to Krishna traditionally ascribed to Kulasekhara, one of the twelve Alvars of the Sri Vaishnav tradition; a closely related third-person version of the same verse also appears in the Bhagavata Purana (11.2.36).
None of the three pieces was composed as a set — each has its own separate origin — but Marathi aarti collections print them together under the title Ghalin Lotangan, and that is how they are sung: one after another, without pause, at the close of the aarti. Some printed collections continue on from there into two further, separately titled and separately attributed pieces — the Sanskrit stotra “Achyutam Keshavam” and the Hare Krishna maha-mantra. Those are not published or named as Ghalin Lotangan itself, so they are treated here as what they are: separate compositions that are sometimes sung immediately afterward, not verses of this prayer.
How it is recited
Ghalin Lotangan is sung standing, after the aarti thali — the plate bearing a lit lamp — has already been circled before the deity’s image, so it functions as the closing word of the worship rather than an accompaniment to the lamp itself. All three parts are sung straight through as one continuous sequence rather than repeated as a refrain, and it is typically the last thing sung before puja concludes for the day.
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