Bhaktamara Kalyanmandir Namiun Stotratrayam

SR No.: 003015
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Hiralal R Kapadia
Publisher: Devchand Lalbhai Pustakoddhar Fund
Publication Year: 1932
Total Pages: 408
Language: Sanskrit
Classification: Book_Devnagari & Literature
File Size: 24 MB

Page 15

FOREWORD
interrelation between both stotras cannot reasonably be doubted; but it contrasts with the Bhaktāmara stotra not favourably by the poet's undue predilection for verbal artifices. The similarity in form of both hymns is very remarkable; for, either contains forty-three verses in the same metre Vasantatilakā. The exact number of verses of the Bhaktāmara as stated just now requires a short explanation. Our present text contains 44 verses; however the 43rd verse is but a dry recapitulation of the detailed descriptions in verses 34-42; it is a kind of memorial verse such as no true poet would admit into his work. The Kalyāṇamandira stotra has but 43 verses in Vasantatilakā, to which is added one in Aryā; the author apparently was averse to exceeding the number of Vasantatilakā verses of the model stotra on which he constructed his own. The 43rd verse seems, therefore, to have been added to the text of the Bhaktāmara after the time of Kumudachandra. I have also grave doubts about the genuineness of verse 39; for, it contains but a repetition and somewhat verbose variation of the idea so well expressed in the preceding verse; the recurrence of the same idea appears rather strange as the poet has allotted one verse only to each of the seven remaining calamities from which the faithful are preserved through their devotion to the Tīrthankara. But if verse 39 is a sa, it must already have been regarded as genuine by the time that the Kalyāṇamandira stotra was composed, since otherwise we should not get the required number of verses.
In the preceding remarks it has been assumed as granted that the Kalyāyamandira stotra is an imitation of the Bhaktāmara. Pandit Durgāprasād entertained the same opinion saying that Kumudachandra was भक्तामरस्तोत्रानुकरणप्रवृत्तः. A considerable number of ideas are common to both stotras, and when we examine the corresponding passages, those in the Bhaktāmara seem to contain the original conception. But Kumudachandra in borrowing an idea from the older work adorned and turned it in such a way that it appeared new. He certainly was an excellent poet, proficient in Kāvya and perhaps too fond of alamkāras. Both the stotras are equally popular with the S'vetāmbaras as well as the Digambaras, and their authors are claimed by either as having belonged to their own section of the Jaina church. The tradition of the Digambaras about Mānatunga has not yet been published, as far as I know. Our investigation of his age and the circumstances of his life, on which we shall enter now, is. entirely based on S'vetāmbara sources; they are of two kinds: (1) legendary accounts of Manatunga's life and (2) notices about him in the Pattāvalīs. For the life of Manatunga I have used Prabhāchandra's Prabhāvaka-charita (finished samvat 1334), Merutunga's Prabandhachintāmaņi (samvat 1361 ), and the introductory story in Guņākara’s vivrti on the Bhaktāmara ( samvat 1426 ). The account given in the Prabhāvaka-charita, 12th s'ựnga, seems to be based on an older tradition than that followed by the other sources; for it has preserved