The Holy Prapancasara Tantra

An ornamental horizontal divider with three circular motifs in the center.

Salutations to the Holy Guru.

First Chapter (Patala)

With the seven groups of letters referring to the Sanskrit alphabet categories beginning with A, Ka, Cha, Ta, Ta, Pa, and Ya,
She who constitutes the head, arms, feet, middle, and heart,
The mistress of the entire universe, the eternal one, the source of the world,
May Sarada the Goddess of Speech/Wisdom, Saraswati grant you purity of heart. || 1

Exposition of the Prapancasara

I bow to, praise, and take refuge in the God who is without a form of letters, who is devoid of any letter-form, and who is the knower of the form of letters.

The Lord Shankaracharya, having assumed a body solely out of compassion for the world and having realized the reality of the Supreme Deity, reached the pinnacle of majesty. Feeling pity for the suffering of people, and wishing to create a text that is a compilation of the essence of all the Agamas scriptural traditions, he desires to compose this work. To ensure the success of all intended goals, he first performs an auspicious act mangala consisting of the remembrance of the Supreme Deity and an invocation, thereby implicitly indicating the subject matter and other introductory elements of the text: "With the seven groups of letters beginning with A..." and so on.

The construction is: "May Sarada grant you purity of heart." This invocation is possible only if it is proven that Sarada exists as something distinct from the aggregate of the mind and other faculties. He states the reason for this, claiming her to be the cause of the world: "Source of the world." If one argues that this does not prove Sarada because the world's cause could be mere action karma, since the world is an unprecedented effect, this is incorrect. Because action is an effect, it is impermanent and cannot be the root cause of the universe. Therefore, one must postulate some eternal substance as the material cause of the world. And eternity is possible only for Sarada, who is the witness of all.