Mahabharata — Anushasana Parva, Shloka 113
Ahiṃsā as Threefold Restraint (Mind–Speech–Action) and the Ethics of Consumption
एकस्तरति दुर्गाणि गच्छत्येकस्तु दुर्गतिम् । बृहस्पतिजीने कहा--राजन्! प्राणी अकेला ही जन्म लेता
yudhiṣṭhira uvāca |
ekas tarati durgāṇi gacchaty ekas tu durgatim |
yaḥ nīcaḥ puruṣo dhana-lobhena vā śatrutā-kāraṇād vā śastraṃ gṛhītvā nihataṃ (aśastraṃ) puruṣaṃ hanti sa mṛtyor anantaram gardabha-yoniṃ prāpnoti ||
kharo jīvati varṣe dve tataḥ śastreṇa vadhyate |
sa mṛto mṛga-yoniṃ tu nityodvignaḥ punar jāyate ||
Yudhiṣṭhira said: “Alone a person crosses difficult passages, and alone he falls into ruin. The living being is born alone, dies alone, and alone experiences both the overcoming of suffering and the tasting of misfortune. Therefore, the base man who, out of greed for wealth or out of enmity, takes up a weapon and kills an unarmed man—after death is born in the womb of a donkey. As a donkey he lives for two years, then is slain by a weapon; dying thus, he is born among deer and lives perpetually anxious, ever afraid of hunters.”
युधिछिर उवाच
Educational Q&A
Moral responsibility is personal and inescapable: one faces the fruits of one’s actions alone. Specifically, violence driven by greed or enmity—especially killing an unarmed person—leads to degrading rebirths and a life marked by fear and suffering.
In Anuśāsana Parva’s ethical instruction, Yudhiṣṭhira articulates (with a traditional attribution to Bṛhaspati in the accompanying gloss) a karmic warning: the killer of an unarmed man is reborn first as a donkey, then after being slain, as a deer-like creature, living constantly terrified of hunters.