About Shiv Chalisa

Shiv Chalisa is an independent devotional-text library published by Rocket Internet. We publish Hindu devotional texts — Chalisa, Aarti, Stotra and Mantra — with the full original verses in Devanagari, a Roman transliteration, and a plain-English meaning for every verse. The site is free, carries no advertising, and needs no account to read.

Where these texts come from

The hymns themselves are traditional and in the public domain — most are centuries old and have been passed down through recitation and print for generations. We do not claim authorship of any verse. Where a text has a known traditional author, such as Goswami Tulsidas for the Hanuman Chalisa, we say so on that page.

Several of these hymns circulate in more than one recension, with real differences in wording between regions and printed editions. Where we know a text is contested, we would rather tell you than pretend there is a single official version.

How we check the transcriptions

Devanagari transcription is easy to get subtly wrong, and a wrong syllable in a hymn people recite daily matters. We are working through the library re-checking every verse against printed editions. That work is genuinely in progress and not yet finished.

We would rather publish a hymn marked as incomplete than quietly pad it out with invented verses to reach a round number. If you spot an error in any text on this site, please tell us — corrections from readers who know these texts well are the most valuable thing we receive.

The English meanings

The verse-by-verse meanings are written by us in plain English. They aim to convey the sense of each verse for a reader who does not read Devanagari, not to be a literary translation. They are our own words, not copied from any published translation.

What is here right now

13 texts, and growing. We add new ones steadily rather than in bulk, because each page takes real work to transcribe and check properly.