Mahabharata — Shalya Parva, Shloka 24
Chapter 59: Baladeva’s Censure, Keśava’s Restraint, and Yudhiṣṭhira’s Moral Accounting
आत्मनो हाूपराधेन महद् व्यसनमीदृशम् | प्राप्ततानसि यल्लोभान्मदाद् बाल्याच्च भारत,“भरतनन्दन! तुमने लोभ, मद और अविवेकके कारण अपने ही अपराधसे ऐसा भारी संकट प्राप्त किया है
ātmano hāparādhenā mahad vyasanam īdṛśam | prāptavān asi yal lobhān madād bālyāc ca bhārata ||
Sanjaya said: “O Bharata, it is through your own wrongdoing that you have fallen into so great a calamity—brought on by greed, by arrogance, and by childish lack of discernment.”
संजय उवाच
Educational Q&A
The verse stresses moral causality and personal accountability: great disasters arise not merely from fate or enemies but from one’s own faults—especially greed (lobha), arrogant intoxication (mada), and immature judgment (bālya).
Sanjaya, narrating events to Dhritarashtra, rebukes a Kuru prince (addressed as ‘Bhārata’) by attributing the present grave crisis of the war to that person’s own misconduct and vices rather than to external causes.
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