Shloka 12

कर्णेन व्यूहविधानम् — Karṇa’s Battle Formation and the Pāṇḍava Counter-Plan

Adhyāya 31

Devanagari script

कृत्वा नसुकरं कर्म गतौ स्वर्गमितोडनघ । तथान्ये पुरुषव्याप्रा: परैर्विनिहता युधि

Transliteration

kṛtvā na sukaraṃ karma gatau svargam ito ’naghāḥ | tathānye puruṣavyāghrāḥ parair vinihatā yudhi ||

Translation

Sañjaya sprach: „Nachdem sie Taten vollbracht hatten, die nicht leicht zu vollbringen sind, sind jene makellosen Helden von hier in den Himmel gegangen. Ebenso wurden andere, tigerhafte Männer in der Schlacht von ihren Feinden niedergestreckt — denn der Krieg verschlingt selbst die Mächtigen, und der Tod kommt durch die Listen des Gegners, wie es jenen gealterten Bogenschützen erging.“

Word by Word

• {'kṛtvā': 'having done, having accomplished', 'na sukaraṃ': 'not easy to do

• difficult', 'karma': 'deed, act (especially a weighty or valorous action)', 'gatau': 'gone, departed (dual/plural sense in context)', 'svargam': 'to heaven

• the heavenly world', 'itaḥ': 'from here', 'anaghāḥ': 'blameless, faultless (vocative/plural sense)', 'tathā': 'thus, likewise', 'anye': 'others', 'puruṣavyāghrāḥ': 'tigers among men

• great heroes', 'paraiḥ': 'by others

• by enemies', 'vinihatāḥ': 'slain, struck down', 'yudhi': 'in battle'}

Speaker

संजय उवाच

Characters & Entities

• Sañjaya
• Svarga (heaven)

Educational Q&A

What is the core teaching?

The verse frames battlefield death within a moral-ritual horizon: heroic, arduous action (duskara karma) can lead to svarga, yet war also involves opponents’ stratagems and the vulnerability of even great warriors—highlighting both the ideal of valor and the grim reality of conflict.

What is happening in the narrative?

Sañjaya reports to Dhṛtarāṣṭra that certain blameless heroes, after performing difficult feats, have died and gone to heaven; he generalizes that many other great warriors too have been killed in the fighting by their enemies.