คำอาราธนา means a request or an invitation, and the word sets out the shape of what happens next. Precepts in this tradition are not handed down unasked. Someone who wants them asks a monk for them, and only then are they given, line by line, to be repeated.

What is asked for is one thing in two parts: the Uposatha อัฏฐังคะสะมันนาคะตัง, endowed with eight factors, ติสะระเณนะ สะหะ, together with the Three Refuges. Refuge and precepts are requested in a single breath rather than as two transactions.

All three repetitions are printed in full. The book does not shorten the second and third, and neither does this edition. It is printed in Pali only, so the English is a working translation made here rather than the book's.

Almost nothing changes across the three lines. Only ทุติยัมปิ and ตะติยัมปิ are added — for a second time, for a third time. Saying a thing three times is the tradition's way of marking that it has been formally done rather than merely said, and the same device appears elsewhere in this book wherever something needs to be unmistakable.

The grammar is collective and it is a request, not a declaration. มะยัง, we, and ยาจามะ, we ask. Nothing has been undertaken at this point. The assembly has asked to be given the chance to undertake it, and the precepts themselves come afterwards.

That order is the whole substance of the chant, and the reason it is worth its three lines. A precept that is asked for belongs to the person who asked; one that is simply administered can be received without ever having been chosen. The request is short because it only has to establish who is doing the choosing.