Shloka 64
धर्मगुब् धर्मकृद् धर्मी सदसत्क्षरमक्षरम् । अविज्ञाता सहसारांशुविधाता कृतलक्षण:
dharmagup dharmakṛd dharmī sadasat kṣaram akṣaram | avijñātā sahasrāṃśu-vidhātā kṛtalakṣaṇaḥ ||
Bhīṣma said: He is the guardian of dharma, the one who establishes dharma by embodying it in action, and the very ground of all righteousness. He is both the Real and the manifest world, the perishable and the imperishable. He is the knower beyond the knower (beyond the individual self), the thousand-rayed one like the sun, the sustainer and ordainer of all, and the bearer of sacred marks upon his body.
भीष्म उवाच
Educational Q&A
The verse presents Viṣṇu as the ultimate ground of dharma and reality: he both protects and enacts dharma, and he encompasses apparent opposites—truth and world, perishable and imperishable—showing that ethical order and cosmic order are rooted in the divine.
In Anuśāsana Parva, Bhīṣma is instructing and praising the supreme deity through a litany of epithets. This verse is part of that praise, identifying the deity’s moral role (guardian of dharma) and metaphysical scope (both kṣara and akṣara), reinforcing the devotional and ethical frame of Bhīṣma’s teaching.