Sukhkarta Dukhharta सुखकर्ता दुखहर्ता

Overview

Sukhkarta Dukhharta (“giver of joy, remover of sorrow”) is a Marathi aarti to Ganesha, sung at the close of worship in households and temples across Maharashtra. Its three stanzas are each followed by the same refrain, or dhrupad — “Jai Dev Jai Dev Jai Mangalmurti” — so a full recitation runs to four sung parts even though the composition itself is built from three verses. It is commonly the first aarti sung at the end of a puja, and during Ganesh Chaturthi it is sung daily, often alongside other Ganesh aartis such as Jai Ganesh Jai Ganesh Deva and Shendur Lal Chadhayo.

Origin and source

The aarti is traditionally attributed to Samarth Ramdas, the seventeenth-century Marathi saint and guru of Chhatrapati Shivaji, best known for the Dasbodh. It is said to have been composed after Ramdas had darshan of the Mayureshwar idol at Morgaon, one of Maharashtra’s Ashtavinayak (eight self-manifested Ganesha) shrines, and it is traditionally sung in the Jogiya raga. Like other Marathi aartis of its era, it is composed in the vernacular rather than Sanskrit, which is part of why it reads as direct, personal devotion rather than formal scripture. The third stanza carries the poet’s own signature in its closing line — “dasa ramacha vata pahe sadana,” “this servant of Rama awaits you at his door” — a wordplay on Ramdas’s own name that is a common convention in Marathi bhakti poetry.

How it is recited

Sukhkarta Dukhharta is sung with the refrain repeated after every stanza, typically to a harmonium or simple clapped rhythm, with an aarti thali (plate bearing a lit lamp) circled before the deity’s image as the song is sung. It is recited daily in many Maharashtrian households as part of the closing of puja, and takes on particular prominence during Ganesh Chaturthi, when it is often the aarti that opens or closes each day’s worship of the visiting idol. It is frequently followed by Ghalin Lotangan, the closing prayer traditionally sung to end a Marathi aarti sequence.