Verse 13 borrowed the moon and gave it back damaged. Verse 16 does the same to the lamp, and the three faults it finds are three real limits on any ordinary source of light.
The Verse
कृत्स्नं जगत्-त्रयमिदं प्रकटीकरोषि ।
गम्यो न जातु मरुतां चलिताचलानां
दीपोऽपरस्त्वमसि नाथ जगत्-प्रकाशः ॥१६॥
Transliteration:
nirdhūma-vartir apavarjita-taila-pūraḥ
kṛtsnaṁ jagat-trayam idaṁ prakaṭī-karoṣi |
gamyo na jātu marutāṁ calitācalānāṁ
dīpo’paras tvam asi nātha jagat-prakāśaḥ ||16||
Meaning (literal): Your wick gives no smoke; you have dispensed with any flood of oil; and you make this entire triple world manifest. Never to be reached by the winds that move mountains — you are a lamp of another kind, O Lord, the light of the world.
What to Notice
Three faults, and they are the right three. A lamp smokes: it leaves a residue behind while it works. A lamp drinks oil: it depends on a supply from outside itself and stops when the supply stops. A lamp goes out in wind: it is at the mercy of circumstance. Manatunga does not pick the three at random. Every ordinary source of light in the world has exactly these liabilities, and the hymn is claiming a light that has none.
“Aparaḥ”: another lamp, not a better one. The word is doing careful work. He does not say greater or brighter. He says other — a lamp of a different kind, which is his way of retiring the comparison rather than winning it. He did the same thing to the moon in verse 13. The hymn’s method with borrowed images is consistent: use them, exhaust them, and say so.
“Prakaṭī-karoṣi”: you make manifest. Not create, not illuminate in the sense of adding anything. The three worlds are already there; the light discloses them. This is precise about kevala-jñāna, the omniscience a Jina attains: it knows every substance in every mode across all time, and it makes nothing. Jainism has no creator, and the verb here is careful not to smuggle one in.
The wind is the same wind. Calitācalānām, “the winds that move mountains,” is the identical compound from verse 15, one verse earlier. There it could not move his mind; here it cannot reach his light. Manatunga sets the two stanzas side by side deliberately: the same immunity, applied first to what he is and then to what he knows.
Smoke is a good image for karma. It is the by-product of the process, it is real matter, it settles on things, and it darkens exactly the surfaces the light was meant to reveal. A flame that gives light without leaving smoke is a soul that acts without accruing.
Traditional Use
The manuals diverge on this verse. Vidyasagar.net’s arrangement labels it sarva-vijaya-dāyaka, giver of every victory. The Bhaktamar Mantra Healing manual assigns verse 16 to the quenching of fire — which reads the lamp in the simile rather than the argument the simile is making. As with verse 11, the more literal association appears to be built from an image in the Sanskrit rather than from its subject. We record both, since a reader will find both in print.
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.
Where the Series Pauses, and the 44 or 48 Question
Verse 16 is where this series currently stops, and it is a good place to restate the count question, because a reader working forward will meet it soon.
The Digambara tradition transmits the Bhaktamar Stotra in 48 verses. The Shvetambara tradition transmits it in 44. The difference is four stanzas that complete the description of the eight pratiharyas, the attendant marvels of a Tirthankara’s assembly; in the 48-verse numbering they fall between verses 31 and 36. The oldest known manuscript, dated 1332 CE at Patan, has 44. The Digambara ritual tradition’s consistent practice of 48 yantras and 48 lamps argues, just as consistently, for 48.
Neither recension is wrong, and neither is a corruption of the other. They are two lines of transmission of the same hymn, each internally coherent and each older than any of us. Verses 1 to 16 are identical in both, so nothing in this series so far depends on the question. When we reach the disputed stanzas we will print them, say which tradition carries them, and not adjudicate.
Practicing It the Jain Way
- Recite it at a lamp, if you keep one. The verse is an instruction to look at an ordinary flame carefully — its smoke, its fuel, its flinching in a draught — and it does not work as well in the abstract.
- The three faults are a usable examination. What does what you do leave behind; what does it need from outside to continue; and what conditions can put it out?
- The light this verse describes is what Rishabhanatha is said to have attained under a banyan at Purimatala after a thousand years of austerity. That the tradition dates it, places it, and counts the cost is the part worth holding on to.
Previous: Verse 15, a mountain does not resist the wind · The series continues; new verses are added as each is verified.
Sanskrit collated across jinvani.in, vidyasagar.net, jain24.com and DigJainWiki, which agree on this verse. Verse-use labels from vidyasagar.net and bhaktamarmantrahealing.com, which disagree here. Manuscript and recension details follow Jainpedia and the Wikipedia summary of the Patan manuscript. No riddhi printed: not verifiable against two sources.