Hindu families teach children a short set of evening and bedtime shlokas: the Karacharana Kritam, addressed to Shiva and asking forgiveness for the day’s mistakes, and the Twameva Mata Cha Pita Twameva, a verse of surrender to the divine treated as mother, father, friend and wealth. Both are between three and six lines long, take under a minute to recite, and are the first evening prayers most Hindu children learn alongside the morning Karagre Vasate Lakshmi. Karacharana Kritam is drawn from the larger tradition of Shaiva forgiveness verses and is associated with the broader corpus of Adi Shankara’s hymns; Twameva Mata is from the Pandava Gita, an anonymously compiled collection of verses from the Mahabharata, the Bhagavata and the Vishnu Purana.
Karacharana Kritam: the verse
The Sanskrit text most commonly taught to children is a single verse:
Karacharana kritam va vakkayajam karmajam va
Shravana nayanajam va manasam va aparadham
Vihitam avihitam va sarvam etat kshamasva
Jaya jaya karunabdhe shri mahadeva shambho
Translation: “Whatever wrong I have done with hand or foot, by word, by body, by action, by hearing or seeing, or by the mind, whether knowingly or unknowingly, kindly forgive all of it. Victory, victory to the ocean of compassion, Lord Mahadeva, the gracious one.” The four lines run through the six organs of action and perception (the karmendriya and jnanendriya of classical Samkhya: hand, foot, speech, body, ear, eye, with mind added as the inner faculty), and ask forgiveness for any wrong committed through any of them during the day.
The verse is addressed to Shiva (Mahadeva, the great god). The same forgiveness prayer is included at the end of many longer Shaiva stotras, including some attributed to Adi Shankara, where it functions as a closing apology for any errors of pronunciation or attention during the recitation itself. Folded into a child’s bedtime routine, the same verse becomes a daily check on conduct.
Twameva Mata Cha Pita Twameva: the verse
The second commonly taught evening verse runs:
Twameva mata cha pita twameva
Twameva bandhusha cha sakha twameva
Twameva vidya dravinam twameva
Twameva sarvam mama deva deva
Translation: “You alone are my mother and you are my father; you alone are my relative and you are my friend; you alone are my knowledge and you are my wealth; you alone are everything to me, O God of gods.” The verse appears in the Pandava Gita (also called Prapanna Gita), a compilation of about seventy-five verses drawn from Vyasa’s larger works, popularised in the medieval period as a short Vaishnava devotional reading. The verse is also recited in the closing of the Vishnu Sahasranama in many households.
Because the verse names neither a specific deity nor a sectarian tradition, it sits comfortably in Vaishnava, Shaiva and Shakta households alike. The “deva deva” address at the close is read by each family as their own ishta devata. This is one reason it has become a pan-Hindu prayer in practice.
A short evening routine for children
A typical pre-sleep recitation taught in Hindu homes runs about ninety seconds and includes three to four short verses:
- Karacharana Kritam: the forgiveness verse, asking pardon for any errors of the day.
- Twameva Mata Cha Pita Twameva: the verse of surrender.
- Kayena Vacha: a short closing verse offering all the day’s thoughts, words and actions to Narayana, often appended at the end of formal pujas as well.
- Shanti mantra: three repetitions of Om shanti shanti shantih, traditionally invoked for peace in body, mind and surroundings.
Some families substitute or add the Rama Raksha Stotra‘s short opening verses, the Hanuman Chalisa‘s first quatrain, or the Om saha navavatu peace mantra. The structure is left to the family priest or to household custom. The principle running through the choice is the same: the day closes with an acknowledgement of failure, a surrender of the self, and a request for peaceful rest.
Where these fit in the larger tradition of Sandhya
The adult Brahminical evening prayer is the Sayam Sandhyavandanam, performed at twilight as the third of the three daily sandhyas (trikala sandhya). The Sandhyavandanam involves a fixed sequence of achamana (sipping water), pranayama (breath control), arghya (water offering to the Sun), and recitation of the Gayatri mantra (Rigveda 3.62.10). It is traditionally undertaken after the upanayanam (sacred thread ceremony) and takes around fifteen to twenty minutes.
The children’s prayers above are a simplified pre-Sandhyavandanam practice. They keep the same shape (a daily evening pause to address the divine and review the day) without the more demanding Vedic ritual. Once a child undergoes upanayanam, traditionally around age seven or eight in Brahmin households following the Apastamba or Bodhayana Grhya Sutras, the Sandhyavandanam replaces the simpler set. Non-Brahmin Hindu households generally continue with the shorter verses as the family evening prayer.
Practical points for parents
For what it’s worth, the most common difficulty parents report is not the Sanskrit but the consistency. A bedtime shloka becomes effective as a routine only when it runs through both school nights and weekends, with the same parent or grandparent leading it. Three small practical points:
- Start with one verse, add over weeks. Most children memorise the Karacharana Kritam in two to three weeks of nightly repetition. Add the Twameva Mata only after the first is reliable. Loading multiple verses on day one produces patchy memorisation.
- Recite together at first, then take turns. A child who has heard the verse from a parent for several months will pick up the rhythm before fully understanding the words. The meaning can be explained in stages as the child grows.
- Translate as you go. Read or speak the English meaning at least once a week, so the child knows what the words say. A verse repeated without sense of meaning works less well as a daily ethical pause than one whose lines are understood line by line.
Common questions
At what age should a child start a bedtime prayer routine?
Most Hindu families introduce the Karagre Vasate Lakshmi (morning) and Karacharana Kritam (evening) verses between ages three and five. The child is not expected to understand the Sanskrit at this age, only to participate in the rhythm. Comprehension and reading follow by age seven or eight. There is no scriptural age requirement; the upanayanam at around age seven marks the formal transition to the Sandhyavandanam, but the children’s prayers run from much earlier.
Do these prayers need to face a specific direction?
The Karacharana Kritam and Twameva Mata have no direction requirement; they can be recited sitting on the bed, in front of the home shrine, or anywhere quiet. The adult Sandhyavandanam by contrast has direction rules (facing east at morning sandhya, west at evening sandhya, north at noon). Parents who want to teach direction-discipline early can have the child face east while reciting the evening verses, but no scripture mandates it.
Can a non-Brahmin Hindu family use these prayers?
Yes; the Karacharana Kritam and Twameva Mata are not restricted by caste or by upanayanam status. The restriction historically applied to the Vedic Gayatri Mantra and the formal Sandhyavandanam, both of which were traditionally reserved for the dvija communities (Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya men after upanayanam). The Puranic and stotra verses including the two above have always been open to all householders, women and children. Most contemporary Hindu households use them without restriction.
Are there bedtime prayers specifically named in any major scripture?
No single scripture prescribes a “bedtime prayer” by that name. The closest classical reference is in the Manusmriti and the Grhya Sutras, which describe the Sayam Sandhyavandanam at twilight. The shorter verses children recite were assembled from later devotional literature (Pandava Gita, Adi Shankara’s stotras, the Skanda Purana) and from oral household tradition. The household curriculum varies; the structural idea, evening review and surrender, is consistent.
A limitation worth noting
This article presents a mainstream, broadly pan-Hindu evening prayer set used in many North and South Indian households. Sectarian traditions add their own verses: Vaishnava households often include verses from the Vishnu Sahasranama or the Mukunda Mala; Shaiva households add a Shiva Panchakshari stotra; Shakta households add a short stotra to Durga or Lalita. Sub-traditions following specific acharyas (the Sri Vaishnava, Madhva, Gaudiya, Shrividya traditions) prescribe their own children’s prayer sets. The family priest, the household elder or the sampradaya teacher remains the right source for a tradition-specific evening routine. The attribution of the Karacharana Kritam to Adi Shankara, in particular, is treated as conventional rather than as settled scholarship; the verse is widely cited as Shankara’s but appears in multiple later collections without firm textual provenance.
For broader background, see the Sandhyavandanam entry at Wikipedia and the Gayatri Mantra entry.
