The eighth marvel completes the set, and it is the only one of the eight that has a mechanism.
Which Verse This Is
This series numbers by the Digambara 48-verse recension. Verse 35 is the last of the four stanzas the Shvetambara 44-verse recension does not carry, and it has no Shvetambara verse number. Shvetambara editions that print it place it in an appendix. From the next verse the two recensions run together again with a fixed offset of four, so that this series’ verse 36 is Shvetambara verse 32.
The Verse
सद्धर्म-तत्त्व-कथनैक-पटुस्त्रिलोक्याः ।
दिव्य-ध्वनिर्भवति ते विशदार्थ-सर्व-
भाषा-स्वभाव-परिणाम-गुणैः प्रयोज्यः ॥३५॥
Transliteration:
svargāpavarga-gama-mārga-vimārgaṇeṣṭaḥ
saddharma-tattva-kathanaika-paṭus tri-lokyāḥ |
divya-dhvanir bhavati te viśadārtha-sarva-
bhāṣā-svabhāva-pariṇāma-guṇaiḥ prayojyaḥ ||35||
Meaning (literal): Sought after for the searching out of the road that leads to heaven and to release, uniquely competent at stating the truth of true dharma, your divine sound becomes serviceable to the three worlds through the property of turning, by its own nature, into every language with its meaning clear.
What to Notice
The eighth pratiharya, and the set is complete. Eight stanzas, eight marvels: the ashoka tree at verse 28, the lion throne at 29, the fly-whisks at 30, the triple umbrella at 31, the divine drum at 32, the flower shower at 33, the halo at 34, and here the divya-dhvani, the divine sound. In the Shvetambara recension of 44 the block is four stanzas long and stops at the umbrella.
It is the only marvel with a stated mechanism. The tree shelters, the throne shines, the drum sounds, and none of them is explained. This one is: sarva-bhāṣā-svabhāva-pariṇāma-guṇaiḥ, by the property of transforming into all languages by its own nature. Manatunga tells you how it works, and the how is the doctrinal content of the stanza.
“Svabhāva” is the load-bearing word. By its own nature. Not by the Jina’s intention, not by an act of translation, not by a grace extended to the listener. The sound has the property; the property operates. This is the same grammar the hymn has used for eight stanzas and since verse 9, applied now to the hardest case of all, because teaching is the one thing a Tirthankara might plausibly be said to do.
The traditions describe the sound differently, and the verse does not settle it. One account holds that the divine sound is unlettered, a single resonance from which the chief disciples draw the teaching; another holds that the Tirthankara speaks and the speech becomes each listener’s language. Verse 35 asserts the transformation into all languages and says nothing about whether what leaves him has syllables in it. Readers of either account will find the stanza compatible with theirs, which is probably why it has survived being read in both.
“Svarga” and “apavarga” are not the same destination. Heaven and release, named in the first compound, and in this tradition heaven is still inside the cycle. A god has a long life and then a death and another birth; apavarga is the end of the sequence. Manatunga puts them in one compound as two places the road goes, because the road does go to both, and does not pause to rank them. The whole hymn assumes the reader knows which one is the point.
“Vimārgaṇa” plays on “mārga.” Gama-mārga-vimārgaṇa: the searching-out of the road that goes. Road and searching are the same root. It is a small piece of wordplay, and it is the only one Manatunga has taken in eight stanzas of declining much better ones.
“Prayojyaḥ”: to be put to use. The last word of the stanza and of the pratiharya block, and it is not a devotional word. It means applicable, employable, fit to be used. Eight verses of tree, gold, jewels, whisks, pearls, drums, flowers and light end on the observation that the teaching is serviceable.
A note on the metre. Scan the second pada, saddharma-tattva-kathanaika-paṭus tri-lokyāḥ, and it comes out heavy in the third position, where Vasantatilaka requires a light syllable. The -ma- of saddharma- is short, but the consonant cluster that opens tattva closes the syllable and makes it heavy. All three editions we consulted transmit the line identically, so this is not a printer’s slip that a fourth edition would fix. It is one syllable out of fifty-six in the stanza, and the other three padas are exact. We record it because this series records what it finds rather than smoothing it, and we draw nothing from it: questions of authorship are settled by manuscripts and not by a single heavy syllable, and this series takes no position on who composed the four disputed stanzas.
Traditional Use
The lists overlap, and between them they name a disease, a crime, a famine and a diagnosis that no longer exists.
Vidyasagar.net’s arrangement labels verse 35 durbhikṣa corī miragī ādi nivāraka, averter of famine, theft, epilepsy and the like. The Bhaktamar Mantra Healing manual assigns it to protection from hysteria.
We report all of it and endorse none of it, and on the two medical items the refusal is flat.
Epilepsy is a neurological condition, it is controlled in the large majority of people by inexpensive anticonvulsant medication, and it is dangerous mainly when it is untreated: a seizure lasting more than five minutes is a medical emergency, and repeated uncontrolled seizures cause injury and can cause death. It is also, in India, among the most heavily stigmatised conditions there are, tangled up with ideas of possession, marriage prospects and moral fault. A printed instruction to recite a verse against it does not sit outside that history. It contributes to it.
“Hysteria” is not a diagnosis. The word was retired from psychiatric classification decades ago, and what it used to name was some mixture of epilepsy, functional neurological disorder, and the ordinary distress of women whose accounts of themselves were not believed. Reprinting it in a modern devotional manual carries the whole assumption along with it.
On famine and theft, we note only that the stanza is about a sound that becomes every language, and that it makes no offer of any kind to the reciter.
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
- Read verses 28 to 35 straight through once, then read 28 to 31 straight through once. Those are the two hymns the two traditions actually recite, and both of them work.
- The stanza is about a sound, so hear it rather than parse it. It is also the least ornamental verse in the block, which is worth noticing in the one that describes the teaching.
- Nothing in eight stanzas has been attributed to Rishabhanatha as an act, including the teaching. In this tradition the discourse is a property of an omniscient being, not a decision taken by one.
Previous: Verse 34, a light that beats the day and the night · Next: Verse 36, gold lotuses laid under the feet.
Sanskrit collated across jinvani.in, vidyasagar.net and DigJainWiki; the jain24.com Sanskrit page did not resolve for this stretch. The three agree on this stanza; differences are limited to word division and virama placement, such as vidyasagar.net's दिव्य-ध्वनिर-भवति for दिव्यध्वनिर्भवति. The irregularity in the third syllable of the second pada is present in all three and is recorded above rather than emended. Verse 35 is carried only by the Digambara 48-verse recension; the Shvetambara 44-verse recension omits it. Recension mapping follows Jainpedia and the English Wikipedia article on the Bhaktamara Stotra. Verse-use labels from vidyasagar.net and bhaktamarmantrahealing.com, which overlap in part here. No riddhi printed: not verifiable against two sources.