Shloka 45
अव्यक्त–प्रकृति–इन्द्रियविचारः
The Unmanifest, Prakṛtis, and the Sense-Complex
सर्व: स्वानि शुभाशुभानि नियतं कर्माणि जन्तु: स्वयं गर्भात् सम्प्रतिपद्यते तदुभयं यत् तेन पूर्व कृतम् । मृत्युश्नापरिहारवान् समगति: कालेन विच्छेदिना दारोश्वूर्णमिवाश्मसारविहितं कर्मान्तिकं प्रापयेत्
parāśara uvāca |
sarvaḥ svāni śubhāśubhāni niyataṁ karmāṇi jantuḥ svayaṁ garbhāt sampratipadyate tadubhayaṁ yat tena pūrva kṛtam |
mṛtyuś cāparihāryavān samagatiḥ kālena vicchedinā dāroś cūrṇam ivāśmasāravihitaṁ karmāntikaṁ prāpayet ||
Parāśara sprach: Jedes Wesen beginnt, vom Augenblick an, da es in den Mutterleib eintritt, unausweichlich—Schritt für Schritt—die festgesetzten Früchte seiner eigenen guten und schlechten Taten zu empfangen und zu erleiden, beides in der Vergangenheit vollbracht. Und der Tod, unvermeidlich und gewiss, bringt den Menschen mit Hilfe der Zeit, die alle Bindungen zerschneidet, an das Ende seines Karma—wie der Wind das Sägemehl zerstreut, das beim Sägen von Holz entsteht.
पराशर उवाच
Educational Q&A
The verse teaches that beings inevitably experience the fixed results of their own past good and bad actions from the very start of embodied life, and that death—working through the cutting power of time—cannot be avoided and brings embodied karma to its endpoint.
Parāśara is instructing his listener in a reflective, didactic context typical of Śānti Parva: he explains karmic causality across births and underscores the certainty of death, using a vivid simile of sawdust scattered by wind to illustrate how time and death bring life’s course to its conclusion.