Illustration by Raja Ravi Verma. In illustrations, the goddess often sits on a lotus flower and appears with five heads and five pairs of hands, representing the incarnations of the goddess as Parvati, Saraswati etc. She is especially identified with Saraswatī.

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Gayatri (Sanskrit: गायत्री, gāyatrī) is the feminine form of gāyatra, a Sanskrit word for a song or a hymn.

Gāyatrī is typically portrayed as seated on a red lotus, signifying wealth. She appears in either of these forms:

• Having five heads with the ten eyes looking in the eight directions plus the earth and sky, and ten arms holding all the weapons of Vishnu, symbolizing all her reincarnations.^{[citation needed]}
• Accompanied by a white swan, holding a book to portray knowledge in one hand and a cure in the other, as the goddess of Education.^{[citation needed]}

Hymns [link]

Recitation of the Gayatri Mantra is preceded by oṃ(ॐ) and the formula bhūr bhuvaḥ svaḥ (भूर् भुवः स्वः), known as the mahāvyāhṛti ("great utterance"). This prefixing of the mantra proper is described in the Taittiriya Aranyaka (2.11.1-8), which states that scriptural recitation was always to begin with the chanting of the syllable oṃ, followed by the three Vyahrtis and the Gayatri verse.^[1] Following the mahāvyāhṛti is then the mantra proper, the verse RV 3.62.10:

	Gayatri Mantra Audio Recitation of Gayatri Mantra (19 seconds)
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

Whereas in principle the gāyatrī metre specifies three pādas of eight syllables each, the text of the verse as preserved in the Rigveda Samhita is one syllable short, the first pāda counting seven instead of eight. Metrical restoration would emend the attested tri-syllabic vareṇyaṃ with a tetra-syllabic vareṇiyaṃ.^[2]

The hymn of Gayatri Devi

See also [link]

• Upanayanam
• Saraswati

Notes [link]

Further reading [link]

• Gayatri Mahavigyan The Most And the best Book for understanding Ma gayatri.https://pustak.org/home.php?bookid=4272 [2]

you can read the book online by https://literature.awgp.org/books [3]

• Sacinandana Swami: The Gayatri Book., Vasati Verlag, 2005, ISBN 978-3-937238-05-0
• "Gayatri Sahasranam", Swami Satyananda Saraswati, Devi Mandir (ISBN 1-877795-57-7)
• Sadguru Sant Keshavadas (1978,2006). Gayatri: The Highest Meditation. Dehli: Motilal Bandarsidass Publishers PVT. LTD.. pp. 148 pages. ISBN 81-208-0697-2.  [4]

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