With verse 28 the hymn stops arguing and starts describing. What it describes first is a dark tree with a gold figure under it.
The Verse
माभाति रूपममलं भवतो नितान्तम् ।
स्पष्टोल्लसत्-किरणमस्त-तमो-वितानं
बिम्बं रवेरिव पयोधर-पार्श्ववर्ति ॥२८॥
Transliteration:
uccair aśoka-taru-saṁśritam unmayūkham
ābhāti rūpam amalaṁ bhavato nitāntam |
spaṣṭollasat-kiraṇam asta-tamo-vitānaṁ
bimbaṁ raver iva payodhara-pārśva-varti ||28||
Meaning (literal): Sheltering under the lofty ashoka tree, throwing out rays, your stainless form shines exceedingly, like the disc of the sun standing at the side of a raincloud, its rays clearly blazing, the canopy of darkness put down.
What to Notice
The mode changes. Twenty-seven verses of argument, comparison, concession and salutation end at verse 26, and from here the hymn does something it has not done at all: it looks at a scene and reports it. The eight pratihāryas, the marvels that the tradition says attend a Tirthankara’s assembly, are described one after another from this stanza on, and the ashoka tree is the first of them. There is no reasoning in verse 28. There is a tree, a figure, a light and a comparison.
The simile is exact about where the cloud is. Payodhara-pārśva-varti: standing at the side of the raincloud. Not behind it and not above it. The dark spreading canopy of the ashoka is the cloud; the golden form beneath is the sun’s disc beside it. A cloud in that position does not obstruct anything. It supplies the dark ground against which the rays become visible, which is precisely what the tree is doing for the figure.
Set that against verse 17. Eleven stanzas earlier the raincloud was one of three named failures of the sun: ambhodhara-udara-niruddha, the great power shut inside the belly of a cloud. Here the cloud is next to the light and helps it show. This is not Manatunga contradicting himself. In verse 17 the cloud was an obstacle the sun cannot avoid; here it is a background, and the difference between an obstacle and a background is the whole distance the hymn has travelled.
“Vitāna” is used twice over. The word means a canopy, and it does duty for the spreading tree and for the asta-tamo-vitāna, the canopy of darkness that has been put down. The stanza’s one piece of wordplay puts a canopy above the figure and removes a canopy from the world in the same line.
“Aśoka” means without sorrow, and he leaves it alone. The name of the tree is a gift to a devotional poet and Manatunga does not take it. He calls it aśoka-taru and moves straight on to the light. The hymn has spent twenty-seven verses on what the ending of affliction consists of; it evidently does not think the point needs a pun.
“Amalam” again. Stainless. It is the hymn’s most repeated adjective through this whole stretch, appearing in verses 18, 23, 24, 25 and now 28. The word that comes back most often in a hymn of praise is a negative one, which is consistent with a tradition that describes its highest state by subtraction.
What the verse does not say. It does not say the Jina made the tree, called the light, or produced a marvel. The grammar is ābhāti rūpam, the form shines. In the tradition’s own accounts the pratihāryas are arranged by the devas in the presence of a Tirthankara, not performed by him; a Jina in this system acts on nothing. The description is of what appears around him, and the hymn keeps the distinction even while it is at its most pictorial.
Where the Recensions Will Divide
Verse 28 opens the section in which the two transmissions of this hymn eventually part, so it is worth saying where the line falls before we reach it.
The Digambara tradition transmits the Bhaktamar Stotra in 48 verses, the Shvetambara tradition in 44. The four stanzas at issue complete the description of the eight pratihāryas, and in the 48-verse numbering they are verses 32, 33, 34 and 35. Everything up to and including verse 31 is common ground: verses 28, 29, 30 and 31, the ashoka tree, the lion throne, the fly-whisks and the three umbrellas, are carried identically by both. The divergence begins after that, and from verse 36 the numbering runs four apart, so that Digambara 36 is Shvetambara 32 and Digambara 48 is Shvetambara 44.
Neither recension is wrong and neither is a corruption of the other. The oldest known manuscript, dated 1332 CE at Patan, has 44; the Digambara ritual practice of 48 yantras and 48 lamps is equally consistent in the other direction. When this series reaches the disputed stanzas we will print them, label which tradition carries them, and not adjudicate.
Traditional Use
The lists disagree, and the first is the broadest promise attached to any verse in this stretch.
Vidyasagar.net’s arrangement labels verse 28 sarva kārya siddhi dāyaka, giver of success in every undertaking. The Bhaktamar Mantra Healing manual assigns it to the subduing of an enemy.
We print both and endorse neither. A label that promises success in every undertaking is not a claim that can fail, which is exactly what makes it worth declining: it works by taking credit for whatever happens. The stanza itself describes a tree and a light and offers nothing to anybody. On subduing enemies our position is the one recorded at verses 21 and 22, that power over another person is not a boon this tradition has room for.
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 as description rather than as praise. The stanza is a picture, and it rewards being seen before it is interpreted.
- The cloud is the useful part. Most of what shows a light is dark, adjacent and not in the way, and the verse is unusually precise about that arrangement.
- The assembly described here is the samavasarana, which the tradition places at Purimatala after Rishabhanatha attained omniscience. The marvels are what gathered around him. None of them are his doing.
Previous: Verse 27, the faults never even looked · Next: Verse 29, a lion throne with no lion.
Sanskrit collated across jinvani.in, vidyasagar.net, jain24.com and DigJainWiki. We print पार्श्ववर्ति with vidyasagar.net; jinvani.in sets पाश्र्ववर्ति, a broken conjunct rather than a variant. Verse 28 is identical in the Digambara and Shvetambara recensions, as are verses 29 to 31; the four disputed stanzas fall after verse 31. Manuscript and recension details follow Jainpedia and the published description of the 1332 CE Patan manuscript. Verse-use labels from vidyasagar.net and bhaktamarmantrahealing.com, which disagree here. No riddhi printed: not verifiable against two sources.