The Lalita Sahasranama is the central recited text of Shri Vidya, the South Indian tantric tradition of the goddess as Tripurasundari, and its greatest interpreter was Bhaskararaya Makhin, the eighteenth century polymath whose commentary, the Saubhagya Bhaskara, reads the litany as a complete map of the tradition's theology. Under his reading the names encode the Sri Chakra, the goddess's geometric form, the stages of the kundalini's ascent, and the identity of the worshipper's own consciousness with the goddess, so that reciting the names is not description but participation.
R. Ananthakrishna Sastry's English rendering of text and commentary, published through the Adyar Library in 1899, carried the work into world scholarship. Recitation is a living mass practice. The Sahasranama is chanted in the great goddess temples of South India, at Kanchipuram, Madurai and countless others, in household worship on Fridays and full moon days, and in the namavali form of archana, each name offered with kumkum before the image. Devotional custom holds Friday recitation especially dear to the goddess, and organized group chanting, including large women's recitation circles, has carried the practice through the diaspora. Few Sanskrit texts of any period are recited by more people on any given week, a tantric litany become a household prayer.