Acarya Manatunga's Bhaktamara Stotra- Hindi Poetic Translation and Gloss

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The Jains have composed hymns in dozens of languages over the pa two millennia. The most popular of them, without a doubt, has long been the Bhaktamara Stotra of the monk and post Manatunga. If one were to attempt the impossible task of compiling a census of all of the hundreds of thousands of manuscripts in the Jain libraries throughout India, I predict that one would find there to be more copies of the Bhaktämara Stotra than of any other text. For more than a thousand years it has been sung and recited by Jains in every part of India (and now the world), and by Jains of every sectarian persuasion. It is truly a universal, ecumenical Jain text. I recommend it as the initial text for students to read in a course on Jainism.

In elegant yet highly accessible Sanskrit verse. Manatunga sings his devotion to the Jina-in this case Adinatha, the first Jina of his poem comprises a clear description of the Jain conception of God, and thus has been used by Jains to establish that they are not atheists. It presents the distinctive Jain definition of God as omniscient and perfect. The hymn also describes the proper attitude of devotion (bhakti) with which a Jain should approach the Jina. This is indicated in the opening words of the hymn (bhakta-amara, "devoted deities"), which describe the kings of the gods bowing to the feet of the Jina, and the resulting mutual effulgence of the glory of his toenails being reflected in their crowns, and the gems in their crowns being reflected in his toenails. The poet also sings the benefits of Jain bhakti: one is released from all worldly sorrows and oppressions, and in the end can attain to the highest goal, liberation itself His poem

The careful work of scholars over the past century has clearly established that Manatunga was a monk-poet who lived in the sixth century CE. Slightly different biographies of Manatunga are presented both within and between the Svetämbara and Digambara traditions, and the two traditions have preserved recensions of the poem that differ in length. The Digambara version, presented here, contains forty-eight verses, while the Svetämbara version contains only forty-four. But these scholarly and sectarian details are of no concern to the Svetämbara and Digambara worshippers who sing the hymn in its different forms, and it is the shared devotional culture of the hymn that has made it so universally popular. Thousands of Jains sing it every day in their homes and in temples.