Shloka 38
भृगु–भरद्वाजसंवादः: वर्णभेदस्य कर्माधारितव्याख्या
Bhrigu–Bharadvaja Dialogue: A Karma-Based Account of Varṇa
न पुल्कसो न चाण्डाल आत्मान त्यक्तुमिच्छति । तया तुष्ट: स्वया योन्या मायां पश्यस्व यादृशीम्,“भंगी अथवा चाण्डाल भी अपने शरीरको त्यागना नहीं चाहता है, वह अपनी उसी योनिसे संतुष्ट रहता है। देखिये, भगवान्की कैसी माया है?
na pulkaso na cāṇḍāla ātmānaṁ tyaktum icchati | tayā tuṣṭaḥ svayā yonyā māyāṁ paśyasva yādṛśīm ||
Bhishma said: “Neither the Pulkaśa nor the Cāṇḍāla wishes to abandon his own embodied self. Content with the very birth and station that has come to him, he remains satisfied in his own womb-line. Behold, then, what a wondrous power of delusion this is—how the Lord’s māyā makes each being cling to its allotted condition.”
भीष्म उवाच
Educational Q&A
Bhishma highlights how beings cling to embodied life and to the circumstances of their birth, taking satisfaction in what is familiar. This attachment is presented as an effect of māyā—an obscuring power that makes one identify with one’s station and resist renunciation or transformation.
In the didactic discourse of the Śānti Parva, Bhishma is instructing Yudhiṣṭhira on dharma and the workings of human attachment. He uses socially marginal examples (Pulkaśa and Cāṇḍāla) to show that the impulse to preserve one’s life and accept one’s birth-condition is universal, and he points to the Lord’s māyā as the underlying force.