Bhaktamara Stotra is the most famous of the Jain sanskrit prayers. It was composed by Acharya Manatunga. The name Bhaktamara comes from a combination of two sanskrit names, "Bhakta" (Devotee) and "Amar" (Immortal). So, it is said that by recitation of this Stotra, a person gets free from the worldly bonds, attains salvation, and hence becomes immortal.
Jain hymnology is a rather extensive branch of their literature…yet among the almost numberless productions of ecelesistical muse Mantunga’s Bhaktamar has held, during many centuries, the foremost rank by the unanimous cousent of the Jains. And it fully deserves its great popularity by its religious pathos and the beauty of the dection. Though Mantung writes on the flowery style of classical Sanskrit poetry, still he avoids laboured conceits and verbal artifacts as such Alankar’s are apt to obscure the Ras and his Verses are, as a rule, kavyas. Being a work of devotion the Bhaktamar has also the character of a prayer for help in the dangers and trials under which men suffer. It is perhaps this particular trial which greatly endeared the Bhaktamar to the heart of the faithful.
Legends associate Manatunga with a ruler named Bhoja. However Manatunga lived a few centuries before Raja Bhoja of Dhara (Dhar, MP). He is identified by some scholars as Kshapanaka (the term implies a Jain monk), one of the Navaratnas in the court of legendary Vikramaditya. An unidentified Sanskrit poet Matanga, composer of "Brahaddeshi" on music theory, may also have been the same person. The composition is done sometime in the Gupta or the post-Gupta period, making Manatunga approximately contemporary with other nava-ratnas like Kalidasa and Varahamihira. There are many legends associated by the Bhaktamar stotra. There are several spots near Bhopal and Dhar traditionally associated with Acharya Manatunga.