Shloka 22
पुत्रो! तुम सदाचारी और मेरे लिये प्राणोंसे भी अधिक प्यारे हो। मैंने बड़े कष्टसे तुम्हें पाया है; अतः तुम्हें छोड़कर अलग नहीं रहूँगी। मैं भी तुम्हारे साथ वनमें चलूँगी। हाय कृष्णे! तुम क्यों मुझे छोड़े जाती हो? ।। अन्तवत्यसुधर्मेडस्मिन् धात्रा कि नु प्रमादतः । ममान्तो नैव विहितस्तेनायुर्न जहाति माम्
antavaty asu dharme 'smin dhātrā kiṃ nu pramādataḥ | mamānto naiva vihitas tenāyur na jahāti mām ||
“My son! You are virtuous and dearer to me than life itself. I obtained you only through great hardship; therefore I will not live apart from you. I too will go to the forest with you. Alas, O Kṛṣṇā, why do you leave me? In this perishable world, has the Creator, through some inadvertence, failed to appoint an end for me? For my death has not been ordained—therefore my life does not leave me.”
वैशमग्पायन उवाच
Educational Q&A
The verse voices a grief-stricken reflection on mortality and destiny: although the world is inherently finite, the speaker feels unnaturally unable to die, as if the cosmic ordainer has not fixed their end—highlighting the tension between human suffering and the belief in a divinely ordered fate.
In the midst of lamentation, the speaker expresses despair that death does not come despite overwhelming sorrow, questioning whether the Creator has, by negligence, failed to decree their end; it intensifies the emotional and ethical atmosphere of the episode by framing personal anguish against cosmic order (dhātrā, dharma).