Śivasaṃhitā 4.99

The final verse of Chapter Four closes the text with the same gesture with which its deepest sections began: Śiva reveals through sneha (love, from sneh-, to anoint, to pour oil) and protects through the same sneha. The circular structure of the chapter — opening with the promise of the ten mudrās, closing with the imperative of secrecy — expresses the cosmology of the text itself: teaching is an emission (sṛṣṭi) and its protection is a containment (saṃhāra), imitating the two movements of the cosmos.

Priye — ‘O beloved, O dear one’ — is the vocative of priyā, the most intimate epithet Śiva uses to address Pārvatī. The entire chapter has been a love conversation: the Lord revealing to his consort the deepest mysteries of the body as the seat of the sacred. This intimacy is not decorative but epistemologically significant: the deepest secrets are only revealed in the space of total trust.

The final formula sarvaguhyatamaṃ guhyam… sādhoḥ surakṣitam — ‘the most secret among all secrets… well guarded by the wise one’ — creates the narrative seal of the chapter. The sādhu (the genuine practitioner, the one of good conduct) who receives this teaching has the responsibility of being its custodian: not an exclusive possessor but a guardian who transmits only when the recipient is prepared and the transmission has been sanctioned by the guru. The chapter ends where it began: on the threshold between what can be said and what can only be lived.