Shloka 53
वृत्ति-सत्सङ्ग-दान-धर्म
Livelihood, Virtuous Association, and Ethics of Giving
खोरक: सौरभेयाणामूषरं पृथिवीतले । पशूनामपि धर्मज्ञ दृष्टिप्रत्यवरोधनम्
bhīṣma uvāca | khorakaḥ saurabheyāṇām ūṣaraṃ pṛthivītale | paśūnām api dharmajña dṛṣṭi-pratyavarodhanam ||
Bhishma said: “O knower of dharma, even among animals there are manifestations of ‘fever’ in their own forms. In cows and bulls, the ailment called khoraka affecting the hooves is their fever. On the earth’s surface, barren saline wasteland (ūṣara) is the earth’s fever. And the obstruction of animals’ power of sight, O dharma-knower, is also to be understood as their fever.”
भीष्म उवाच
Educational Q&A
Bhishma frames ‘fever’ as a broad principle of affliction: each class of beings (animals, the earth itself) has characteristic forms of disorder. The ethical point is to cultivate discerning awareness of suffering in all beings and to understand that harm and imbalance manifest in many subtle ways, not only as obvious illness.
In the Shanti Parva’s instruction to Yudhiṣṭhira, Bhishma continues a didactic explanation that catalogs how ‘jvara’ (fever/affliction) appears differently across beings. Here he identifies hoof-disease in cattle, barren saline land as the earth’s affliction, and impairment of animals’ vision as another form of their ‘fever.’