Every Sanskrit poet compares a beautiful face to the moon. In verse 13 Manatunga takes the comparison apart, on two separate grounds, and does not offer a replacement.
The Verse
निःशेष-निर्जित-जगत्-त्रितयोपमानम् ।
बिम्बं कलङ्क-मलिनं क्व निशाकरस्य
यद्वासरे भवति पाण्डु-पलाश-कल्पम् ॥१३॥
Transliteration:
vaktraṁ kva te sura-naroraga-netra-hāri
niḥśeṣa-nirjita-jagat-tritayopamānam |
bimbaṁ kalaṅka-malinaṁ kva niśākarasya
yad vāsare bhavati pāṇḍu-palāśa-kalpam ||13||
Meaning (literal): Where is your face, which steals the eyes of gods, humans and serpents, which has defeated without remainder every standard of comparison in the three worlds — and where is the disc of the night-maker, dirtied by its blemish, which in daylight becomes like a pale withered leaf?
What to Notice
“Kva… kva”: the idiom of no comparison. Where this, where that is not a question about location. It is the Sanskrit way of saying that two things do not belong on the same scale, and the reader is expected to hear the gap rather than measure it. The figure has a name in the poetics manuals — vyatireka, dissimilarity — in which the conventional standard is brought in precisely so that it can be shown to be the lesser thing.
He says outright that the standards have lost. Niḥśeṣa-nirjita-jagat-tritaya-upamānam: every upamāna, every object a poet might compare this face to, in all three worlds, has been conquered without remainder. Manatunga is not searching for a better simile. He is closing the shop.
Charge one: the moon is stained. Kalaṅka is the visible mark on the moon’s disc, and it is exactly the image Jain thought needs. Karma in this system is not guilt or a metaphor; it is subtle matter, actually adhering, actually darkening a surface that is bright by nature. A blemish on a luminous disc is the doctrine in one word.
Charge two: the moon is conditional. This is the sharper objection. The moon is beautiful only against night. Put it in the sky at eleven in the morning and it looks like a pāṇḍu-palāśa, the pale dried leaf of the flame-of-the-forest — papery, bleached, barely there. Manatunga has noticed something true about the daytime moon and turned it into an argument: a quality that requires the right background is not a quality of the thing.
And that is the whole point. What the hymn praises is unconditional. Verse 16 will run the same test on a lamp, which needs a wick, oil, and still air. The moon fails it here. Nothing in this hymn is ever praised for looking good under favourable conditions.
Traditional Use
Two independent lists agree here. Vidyasagar.net’s arrangement labels verse 13 cor bhaya va anya-bhaya nivāraka, the remover of the fear of thieves and of other fears; the Bhaktamar Mantra Healing manual assigns it to protection from theft and to fear while travelling. It is one of the older and more consistently attested associations in the hymn.
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. Reciting a verse is not a lock, and the tradition never sold it as one.
Practicing It the Jain Way
- Recite it when you are about to compare yourself to someone. The verse’s real subject is the machinery of comparison, and its finding is that the machinery is unreliable in both directions.
- Apply the second charge honestly to yourself. Which of your good qualities need the right background to show? Those are the ones the hymn would call moonlight.
- The unconditional quality is what the biography of Rishabhanatha is actually tracking: what remained when the kingdom, the family, the food and the recognition were all gone.
Previous: Verse 12, the atoms that ran out · Next: Verse 14, virtues that cross every border.
Sanskrit collated across jinvani.in, vidyasagar.net, jain24.com and DigJainWiki, which agree on this verse throughout. Verse-use labels from vidyasagar.net and bhaktamarmantrahealing.com. No riddhi printed: not verifiable against two sources.