Shloka 85
ते देवा: सत्यमित्याहुर्निहता इति चाब्लुवन् न च तद् वचन मिथ्या यदाह भगवान् प्रभु:
te devāḥ satyam ity āhur nihatā iti cābruvan | na ca tad vacanaṃ mithyā yad āha bhagavān prabhuḥ ||
Bhīṣma said: “The gods declared, ‘It is true,’ and they also proclaimed, ‘They are slain.’ Yet that statement was not false, for it was spoken by the Blessed Lord, the sovereign master.”
पितामह उवाच
Educational Q&A
The verse asserts the inviolability of divine truth: even if a statement appears contradictory (affirming truth while declaring someone ‘slain’), it is not to be judged as false when it proceeds from the supreme Lord. The ethical point is that higher dharma may transcend ordinary, surface-level interpretations of speech.
Bhīṣma reflects on a proclamation involving the gods and the Lord’s utterance. He emphasizes that the gods affirmed the statement as true and announced the outcome (‘slain’), and he defends the reliability of the Lord’s words—framing the episode as guidance amid the moral tensions of the Kurukṣetra war.