Six verses of argument end here. Verse 26 makes no case, draws no comparison and answers no objection. It says the same two words four times.
The Verse
तुभ्यं नमः क्षिति-तलामल-भूषणाय ।
तुभ्यं नमस्त्रिजगतः परमेश्वराय
तुभ्यं नमो जिन भवोदधि-शोषणाय ॥२६॥
Transliteration:
tubhyaṁ namas tribhuvanārti-harāya nātha
tubhyaṁ namaḥ kṣiti-talāmala-bhūṣaṇāya |
tubhyaṁ namas tri-jagataḥ parameśvarāya
tubhyaṁ namo jina bhavodadhi-śoṣaṇāya ||26||
Meaning (literal): To you, remover of the affliction of the three worlds, O Lord: salutation. To you, the spotless ornament of the face of the earth: salutation. To you, supreme lord of the three worlds: salutation. To you, Jina, drier-up of the ocean of becoming: salutation.
What to Notice
The argument stops. Verses 20 to 25 were a sustained piece of reasoning about other gods, borrowed names and the grounds on which words may be granted. Verse 26 abandons all of it. There is no yathā, no kva, no ablative of reason, nothing to agree or disagree with. After six stanzas of careful work the hymn simply bows, and the shift is audible in recitation.
The dative is the doctrine. Tubhyam, to you. A namaskāra in this tradition is grammatically a giving and never a request; the Namokar Mantra, the most-recited formula in Jainism, consists entirely of salutations and asks for precisely nothing. Verse 26 is built on the same grammar. Four times he gives, four times he asks for nothing, and a reader looking for the petition in the Bhaktamar Stotra will not find one here or anywhere else in it.
“Śoṣaṇa”: dried up, not crossed. The last epithet is the one to slow down on. Bhavodadhi, the ocean of becoming, is a stock image, and the stock verb that goes with it is crossing: a ferry, a boat, a hand extended. Manatunga does not use it. He says the ocean is dried. Nobody is carried anywhere. The obstacle is not navigated, it is removed, which is exactly the theology of verse 9, where the sun does not travel to the pond and the lotus opens by its own nature.
Then how is he “remover of affliction”? Ārti-hara looks like an agent, and in Jain terms a siddha performs no action at all. The hymn has already answered this and the answer is one word: the same way the sun’s light opens the flower. A condition, not an intervention. Verse 9 settled the grammar for the whole hymn, and every apparently active epithet after it should be read through that stanza.
The four epithets summarise the hymn so far. Affliction removed, from the verses on fear. Spotless, from the long argument about stains and lamps in verses 13 to 18. Supreme lord, from the names in verses 23 to 25. And the ocean, which is where the hymn began: in verse 4 Manatunga could not cross an ocean of virtues with his arms, and here the ocean of becoming is simply gone.
“Jina” arrives late. The word appears in the last line, in the vocative, after twenty-five verses. He has called him Nātha, Munīndra, Bhagavan and a dozen borrowed names, and the tradition’s own defining title is held back until the moment the arguing is over.
Traditional Use
The two lists agree here, and this is the place in the series where we want to be most direct about what we will not pass on.
Vidyasagar.net’s arrangement labels verse 26 ādhā śīśī, sira dard, evaṁ prasūti pīḍā nāśaka, destroyer of migraine and of labour pain. The Bhaktamar Mantra Healing manual assigns it to the relief of labour pains. We report both, because a reader will meet them in print, and we do not endorse either.
Childbirth is not a place for a substituted remedy. Obstructed labour, haemorrhage and eclampsia are emergencies that are survivable with care and often fatal without it, and a recitation offered in place of that care has a body count. Recite it in a hospital corridor if it steadies you. Do not recite it instead of going to one.
This is the second stanza in this stretch, after verse 21, to which a manual has attached a childbearing promise. Our position is the one we set out at verse 9 and it does not change: we report what the source says, we name the source, and we decline to endorse it, noting plainly that the verse itself says nothing of the kind.
No riddhi is printed here. The verse-by-verse manual this series cites publishes only through shloka 6, and we do not reproduce mantras we cannot check against a second source.
Practicing It the Jain Way
- Recite it four times through if you recite it at all. The stanza is built on repetition and it does not do its work read once, quickly, as a sentence.
- Notice that you are not asking for anything, and notice whether that is uncomfortable. For most people it is, and the discomfort is the most useful thing in the verse.
- The one who is saluted here is Rishabhanatha, and the tradition is consistent that he neither hears the salutation nor answers it. The hymn has known this since verse 9 and bows anyway.
Previous: Verse 25, you are the Buddha, and Shankara · Next: Verse 27, the faults never even looked.
Sanskrit collated across jinvani.in, vidyasagar.net, jain24.com and DigJainWiki. We print हराय, remover, with jinvani.in; vidyasagar.net sets हाराय, which means a necklace and which puts a heavy syllable in the tenth position, where Vasantatilaka requires a light one. The metre decides it. Verse 26 is identical in the Digambara and Shvetambara recensions. Verse-use labels from vidyasagar.net and bhaktamarmantrahealing.com, which agree in substance here. No riddhi printed: not verifiable against two sources.