Shloka 84

Udyoga-parva Adhyāya 47 — Arjuna’s Deterrent Declaration

Sañjaya’s Report

Devanagari script

तत्रैव तेनास्य बभूव युद्ध महाबलेनातिबलस्य विष्णो: । शेते स कृष्णेन हत: परासु- वतिनेवोन्मथित: कर्णिकार:

Transliteration

tatraiva tenāsya babhūva yuddhaṃ mahābalenātibalasya viṣṇoḥ | śete sa kṛṣṇena hataḥ parāsu-vātinevonmathitaḥ karṇikāraḥ ||

Translation

Sañjaya sprach: Eben dort trat Viṣṇu—von unermesslicher Macht—zum Kampf gegen jenen überaus starken Gegner an. Von Kṛṣṇa niedergestreckt, verlor er sein Leben und blieb für immer auf dem Schlachtfeld liegen, wie ein karṇikāra-Baum, den ein wütender Sturm aus der Erde gerissen hat. Das Bild macht deutlich, wie selbst die stolzeste Kraft zusammenbricht, wenn sie sich gegen eine gerechte, göttlich geführte Macht stellt.

Word by Word

• {'tatraiva': 'right there, on that very spot', 'tena': 'with him

• by that (foe)', 'asya': 'of him', 'babhūva': 'there occurred

• came to be', 'yuddham': 'battle, combat', 'mahābalena': 'by/with the very mighty one', 'atibalasya': 'of the exceedingly strong', 'viṣṇoḥ': 'of Viṣṇu (here, Kṛṣṇa as the divine power)', 'śete': 'lies, rests (on the ground)', 'sa': 'he', 'kṛṣṇena': 'by Kṛṣṇa', 'hataḥ': 'slain, struck down', 'parāsuḥ': 'bereft of life

• dead', 'vātinā': 'by the wind/storm', 'iva': 'like, as if', 'unmathitaḥ': 'uprooted, violently torn out', 'karṇikāraḥ': 'karṇikāra tree (a flowering tree

Speaker

संजय उवाच

Characters & Entities

• Sañjaya
• Kṛṣṇa
• Viṣṇu
• Narakāsura
• battlefield
• karṇikāra tree
• wind/storm

Educational Q&A

What is the core teaching?

The verse highlights the moral that sheer physical might and arrogance are fragile when opposed by dharmic, divinely aligned action; death comes swiftly to those who stand against righteous order, and poetic imagery (the uprooted tree) stresses impermanence and the decisive fall of adharma.

What is happening in the narrative?

Sañjaya describes a fierce combat in which Kṛṣṇa (identified with Viṣṇu) fights an extremely powerful enemy (identified in the accompanying Hindi as Narakāsura) and kills him; the slain foe lies on the battlefield like a tree uprooted by a storm.