The three lines are built from the same three phrases as the offering that precedes them — อะระหัง สัมมาสัมพุทโธ, สวากขาโต and สุปะฏิปันโน. Those phrases belong to the standard recollections of the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha and recur widely in the canon; what the tradition composed here is the arrangement of them into three salutations short enough to bow after.

The bows are printed. Each line is followed by (กราบพร้อมกัน), bow together, set on its own centred line — an instruction to the chanters rather than words to be chanted, and it is what gives this chant its shape: three statements, three prostrations. It is recorded in this file as a rubric rather than as a verse, since nobody says it aloud.

Each line has two halves, and they are grammatically unlike. The first half states something in the third person: the Blessed One is worthy and perfectly enlightened by himself; the Dhamma is well proclaimed; the Sangha of his disciples has practised well. Nothing is asked and nothing is claimed. Only in the second half does a speaker appear, and then only to say what they are doing.

The three verbs of that second half are not the same word three times. อะภิวาเทมิ is the salutation made to a person, นะมัสสามิ the homage paid to what is revered, นะมามิ the plain act of bowing. A translation flattens them into one gesture; the Pali keeps three, and the difference tracks the difference between a teacher, a teaching and a community.

The chant is short because it is not principally words. Its purpose is the three bows, and the lines exist to give each bow something to be about — a reason stated immediately before the body performs it. Coming where it does, it settles an assembly into the posture of the service before anything longer begins.