Shloka 1
अपन हू< बक। है २ >> त्रिसप्तत्याधिकद्विशततमो< ध्याय: धर्म, अधर्म, वैराग्य और मोक्षके विषयमें युधिष्ठिरके चार प्रश्न और उनका उत्तर युधिछिर उवाच कथं भवति पापात्मा कथं धर्म करोति वा | केन निर्वेदमादत्ते मोक्ष वा केन गच्छति,युधिष्ठिरने पूछा--पितामह! मनुष्य पापात्मा कैसे हो जाता है? वह धर्मका आचरण किस प्रकार करता है? किस हेतुसे उसे वैराग्य प्राप्त होता है और किस साधनसे वह मोक्ष पाता है?
Yudhiṣṭhira uvāca: kathaṃ bhavati pāpātmā kathaṃ dharmaṃ karoti vā | kena nirvedam ādatte mokṣaṃ vā kena gacchati ||
Yudhiṣṭhira said: “Grandfather, how does a person become sinful at heart? How does one come to practice dharma? By what cause does one acquire dispassion, and by what means does one attain liberation?”
युधिछिर उवाच
Educational Q&A
The verse frames a fourfold ethical-spiritual inquiry: the origins of sinfulness, the conditions for practicing dharma, the arising of dispassion, and the means to liberation—setting up Bhīṣma’s instruction on moral causality and the path from worldly conduct to mokṣa.
In the Śānti Parva’s post-war instruction, Yudhiṣṭhira approaches the elder Bhīṣma as a moral authority and asks foundational questions about human downfall and uplift—how people fall into adharma and how they can turn toward dharma, renunciation, and liberation.