Namokar Mantra

The text

The mantra consists of five salutations: to the arihants, the enlightened teachers still embodied; to the siddhas, the liberated souls; to the acharyas, the heads of mendicant orders; to the upadhyayas, the teachers of scripture; and to the sadhus, all mendicants. Four further lines state that this fivefold salutation destroys all sin and is the first among all auspicious things.

It is composed in Prakrit rather than Sanskrit, which places it early and reflects the Jain preference for the vernacular of the region over the sacred language of the Vedic tradition.

What it does not do

The mantra names no individual — not Mahavira, not any tirthankara — and no deity. It salutes qualities and offices rather than persons, so that anyone who has attained the state is included and no one is privileged by name.

This has a doctrinal point. Since liberated beings cannot intervene, the recitation is not petition. Jain writers describe its function as the orientation of the reciter towards the qualities named. It is nonetheless used in practice much as a protective and auspicious formula is used elsewhere, recited at waking, before undertakings, and at death.

Use and status

It is the first thing a Jain child learns, is recited by both orders without variation, and is the one text on which Digambara and Svetambara are in complete agreement — a point of some significance in a tradition divided over its canon. It appears in inscriptions from the early centuries CE, including at Mathura, which makes it among the oldest continuously used formulas in Indian religion.