Hayagriva is an incarnation of Vishnu with the head of a horse and is held to be the storehouse of knowledge. The sahasranama says that ' One can worship Lalita only if she wishes us to do so.' This stotra occurs in the Brahmanda Purana (history of the universe) in the chapter of discussion between Hayagriva and Sage Agastya.

The Lalita Sahasranama is said to have been composed by the eight vaag devis ( Vasini, Kameshvari, Aruna, Vimala, Jayani, Modini, Sarveshvari, and Kaulini) upon the command of the goddess Lalita herself. In its root form, the word Lalita means 'spontaneous' from which the meaning 'easy' is derived and implicitly extends to 'play'.

The Lalita Sahasranama does not use any such auxiliary conjunctions and is unique in being an enumeration of holy names that meets the metrical, poetical and mystic requirements of a sahasranama by their order throughout the text.Р”В®tymologically, Lalita means 'She Who Plays'. Generally, sahasranamas use the artifice of adding words like tu, api, ca, and hi, which are conjunctions that do not necessarily add to the meaning of the name except in cases of interpretation. The Lalita Saharanama is one of the only sahasranamas that does not repeat a single name, and has exactly 1000 names, which cannot be found in other Sahasranamas of gods like Vishnu, Shiva (where the total names are either lesser or more than 1000) Therefore, the Sahasranama can be chanted in stotra form, or namavali form.

The names are organized as hymns, or stotras, but are often broken into mantras to represent all 1000 names.

Lalita sahasranama stotram in english