Jai Hanuman Gyan Gun Sagar – Aarti

By the BhaktiRas Editorial Team · Updated 14 July 2026

If you have ever stood in a Hanuman temple on a Tuesday evening while the lamp is passed around, the words that rise first are almost always “Jai Hanuman Gyan Gun Sagar.” These lines are the doorway into the Hanuman Chalisa, the forty-verse hymn Goswami Tulsidas wrote in Awadhi. Many households sing the two opening dohas and the first cluster of chaupais on their own as a short aarti, a way of greeting Hanuman by name before the longer recitation or after the flame has been offered. The wording is plain and the melody easy to hold, which is exactly why it has travelled from village shrines to city apartments without losing its shape. Below you will find the text in Devanagari and clean Roman transliteration, with a fresh line-by-line explanation of what each verse is actually saying.

Jai Hanuman Gyan Gun Sagar Lyrics

Meaning & Significance

The aarti works as a compressed portrait of who Hanuman is. The two opening dohas are not really about Hanuman at first; they are Tulsidas clearing his own throat, admitting his mind needs polishing and asking for the strength to sing at all. That humility is the point. By the time the first chaupai arrives, the tone lifts into open praise: gyan gun sagar, an ocean of wisdom and virtue, and tihun lok ujagar, one whose light fills the three worlds.

From there each line adds a feature. Verse two fixes his role and lineage in a single breath, messenger of Rama, son of Anjani, child of the wind. Verse three names the quality most devotees come for: he removes kumati, the tangled or ill-directed mind, and keeps company with sumati, steady good sense. Verses four and five turn to his form, the golden colour, the earrings and curls, the mace and banner in his hands, the sacred thread on his shoulder. Sung together they let a worshipper picture him fully before asking anything of him, which is the older logic of aarti itself: see the deity clearly, then speak.

How Do You Perform the Aarti?

1. Choose the time — Tuesday and Saturday evenings are the traditional days for Hanuman; Hanuman Jayanti is the most auspicious. Face a Hanuman image or the direction of a nearby temple.
2. Light the lamp — Light a ghee or oil diya and, if you have it, a stick of incense. A red flower or a few tulsi leaves placed before the image is enough of an offering.
3. Begin with the dohas — Recite the two opening dohas slowly to settle the mind, then move into the numbered verses. Keep the rhythm even rather than fast.
4. Circle the flame — During the singing, gently rotate the lit lamp in small clockwise circles before the image, in time with the verses.
5. Close and share — End by folding your hands, offer the closing jaikara, and share the flame's warmth by passing your palms over it and touching them to your eyes or forehead.

What Are the Benefits of Singing This Aarti?

Devotees turn to this short aarti for reasons that are practical as much as devotional. A few of the effects people most often describe:

• Steadies the mind: The line about removing kumati and keeping sumati speaks directly to worry and scattered thinking; many recite it to feel more settled before a hard day.
• Builds courage: Hanuman is the archetype of fearless strength, and calling him 'atulit bal dhama' is a way of borrowing some of that steadiness in the face of fear.
• Short enough for daily use: Unlike the full Chalisa, the opening set can be sung in a couple of minutes, which makes a daily habit realistic.
• Anchors Tuesday worship: For households that keep a Tuesday vrat for Hanuman, this aarti is the natural centrepiece of the evening lamp.
• A gentle entry to the Chalisa: Learning these verses first makes memorising the complete forty-verse Hanuman Chalisa far easier.

Who Wrote This Aarti?

The words are by Goswami Tulsidas (traditionally 1497 to 1623 CE), the poet-saint best known for the Ramcharitmanas, his retelling of Rama’s story in Awadhi that put the epic into the everyday language of northern India. The Hanuman Chalisa, from which this aarti is drawn, is his most recited short work; its forty verses have become the standard hymn to Hanuman across the Hindi belt and far beyond it.

What makes Tulsidas’s Hanuman verses endure is their directness. He writes as an ordinary devotee, not a theologian, admitting his own dullness in the opening doha and then praising Hanuman in images anyone can picture. That plainness is why these lines are sung by children learning their first prayer and by elders who have known them for seventy years.

Frequently Asked Questions

॥ जय बजरंग बली, जय हनुमान ॥