Nine stanzas of separate dangers are gathered here into one compound, and then the whole of it is made to run away.
This series numbers by the Digambara 48-verse recension, in which this is verse 47. In the Shvetambara 44-verse recension it is verse 43. The stanza is carried by both, and so is the whole run of dangers it summarises; the offset of four is the gap left by the stanzas this series numbers 32 to 35.
The Verse
संग्राम-वारिधि-महोदर-बन्धनोत्थम् ।
तस्याशु नाश-मुपयाति भयं भियेव
यस्तावकं स्तव-मिमं मतिमानधीते ॥४७॥
Transliteration:
matta-dvipendra-mṛga-rāja-davānalāhi-
saṁgrāma-vāridhi-mahodara-bandhanotthaṁ |
tasyāśu nāśam upayāti bhayaṁ bhiyeva
yas tāvakaṁ stavam imaṁ matimān adhīte ||47||
Meaning (literal): For the discerning person who recites this hymn of yours, the fear arising from the rutting lord of elephants, the lion, the forest fire, the snake, battle, the sea, the great-bellied disease and bondage swiftly goes to its destruction, as though itself out of fear.
What to Notice
The list is an exact index of the nine stanzas before it. Rutting elephant, verse 38. Lion, 39. Forest fire, 40. Snake, 41. Battle, 42 and 43. Sea, 44. The great-bellied disease, 45. Bondage, 46. Eight dangers over nine verses, because battle took two. Nothing has been added to the list and nothing left out, which is worth knowing: the eight are not an external scheme imposed on the hymn, they are what the hymn just finished describing.
“Bhiyeva”: fear destroyed as if by fear. Bhiyā iva, as though out of fright. The one flourish in an otherwise administrative stanza, and it is a good one. Fear does not merely end; it bolts, the way the animals in the preceding verses might have. Manatunga gives the abstract noun the behaviour of the frightened creatures the list is made of.
Every item on the list is fear, and only fear. Read the grammar: the long compound ends in uttham, arising from, and what arises from all eight is bhayam, singular. The elephant is not removed. The sea is not calmed. What is destroyed is one thing with eight sources. This is the same accounting as verse 44, where the ship stayed on the wave and only the terror was set down, and verse 46, where the chains stayed on and only the fear of them went.
“Mahodara” here, “jalodara” two verses ago. Both are names in the classical nosology for a swollen abdomen. The change of word in the recapitulation is a small sign that Manatunga is summarising from the sense rather than copying his own line.
“Adhīte” means learned, not glanced at. The verb adhi-√i in the middle voice is to study, to have by heart, to recite from memory. Together with matimān, discerning, the stanza’s condition is not that somebody has the text but that somebody has understood and retained it. That is a higher bar than the manuals set.
The hymn refers to itself for the second time. At verse 8 Manatunga said tava saṁstavanaṁ mayedam ārabhyate, this praise of yours is begun by me. Here, thirty-nine stanzas later, tāvakaṁ stavam imam, this hymn of yours. He opened by naming what he was starting and he closes by naming what has been made.
This is a phala-śruti, and that is a known form. Sanskrit hymns conventionally end by stating the fruit of recitation, and the convention is old and not peculiar to Jainism. Recognising the form does not settle whether the fruit is real. It does explain why verses 47 and 48 sound different from everything before them.
Traditional Use
The three sources agree here almost word for word, because the verse tells them what to say.
Vidyasagar.net’s arrangement labels verse 47 sarva bhaya nivāraka, remover of every fear; jinvani.in heads it sakala bhaya vināśana mantra, to the same effect; the Bhaktamar Mantra Healing manual gives “free yourself from all types of fears.” For once every label is simply the fourth line of the verse restated.
We report the agreement and note, as we did at verse 28, that a claim covering everything is a claim that cannot fail. That is a reason for care rather than for confidence. But it is fair to say that this is the least objectionable use-label in the whole section, precisely because it stays where the Sanskrit stays: on fear, and not on elephants, courts, storms or tumours. If a reader wants one sentence about what the closing stanzas of the Bhaktamar Stotra claim to do, this verse is that sentence, and it is more modest than nine pages of manual headings would suggest.
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 it immediately after verses 38 to 46 rather than on its own. It is a summary, and a summary recited without the thing it summarises is a list of nouns.
- Take matimān adhīte seriously as a condition. The verse specifies a person who has understood the hymn and holds it in memory, which is a description of study.
- The subject of all of it is Rishabhanatha, and the hymn has been careful for forty-seven stanzas not to give him a verb. It does not break the rule here either. The fear runs off by itself.
Previous: Verse 46, free of the fear, not the chains · Next: Verse 48, the name in the last line.
Sanskrit collated across jinvani.in, vidyasagar.net, jain24.com and DigJainWiki, which agree on this verse; jinvani.in adds a spurious visarga to अधीते and DigJainWiki sets बन्धनोत्यम् for बन्धनोत्थम्, both typesetting slips rather than readings. The stanza scans as clean Vasantatilaka. Recension mapping established from Jainpedia and the Wikipedia article on the stotra, which place the four disputed stanzas at 32 to 35 of the 48-verse numbering. Verse-use labels from vidyasagar.net, jinvani.in and bhaktamarmantrahealing.com, which agree here. No riddhi printed: not verifiable against two sources.