Mahabharata — Anushasana Parva, Shloka 70
Ahiṃsā as Threefold Restraint (Mind–Speech–Action) and the Ethics of Consumption
छागस्तु निधन प्राप्य पूर्णे संवत्सरे ततः । कीट: संजायते जन्तुस्ततो जायति मानुष:,बकरा पूरे एक वर्षपर मृत्युको प्राप्त होनेके पश्चात् कीड़ा होता है। उसके बाद उस जीवको मनुष्यका जन्म मिलता है
chāgas tu nidhanaṃ prāpya pūrṇe saṃvatsare tataḥ | kīṭaḥ saṃjāyate jantus tato jāyati mānuṣaḥ ||
Yudhiṣṭhira said: “After a goat meets its death, when a full year has passed thereafter, that embodied being is born as a worm; and after that, it attains birth as a human.”
युधिछिर उवाच
Educational Q&A
The verse presents a karmic, stepwise movement through embodiments—after death as a goat, the being is said to take a lower form (worm) and then a human birth—highlighting that births follow moral causality and that human birth is a consequential opportunity for dharma.
Yudhiṣṭhira is speaking within a dharma-discourse context in the Anuśāsana Parva, articulating an example of transmigration to illustrate how embodied beings move through different forms over time according to karmic conditions.