Shloka 45
अव्यक्त–प्रकृति–इन्द्रियविचारः
The Unmanifest, Prakṛtis, and the Sense-Complex
सर्व: स्वानि शुभाशुभानि नियतं कर्माणि जन्तु: स्वयं गर्भात् सम्प्रतिपद्यते तदुभयं यत् तेन पूर्व कृतम् । मृत्युश्नापरिहारवान् समगति: कालेन विच्छेदिना दारोश्वूर्णमिवाश्मसारविहितं कर्मान्तिकं प्रापयेत्
parāśara uvāca |
sarvaḥ svāni śubhāśubhāni niyataṁ karmāṇi jantuḥ svayaṁ garbhāt sampratipadyate tadubhayaṁ yat tena pūrva kṛtam |
mṛtyuś cāparihāryavān samagatiḥ kālena vicchedinā dāroś cūrṇam ivāśmasāravihitaṁ karmāntikaṁ prāpayet ||
Parāśara said: Every creature, from the very moment it enters the womb, inevitably begins to receive and undergo—step by step—the fixed results of its own auspicious and inauspicious deeds, both performed in the past. And death, unavoidable and certain, aided by time that severs all connections, brings a person to the end of his karma—just as the wind scatters sawdust produced by a saw cutting wood.
पराशर उवाच
Educational Q&A
The verse teaches that beings inevitably experience the fixed results of their own past good and bad actions from the very start of embodied life, and that death—working through the cutting power of time—cannot be avoided and brings embodied karma to its endpoint.
Parāśara is instructing his listener in a reflective, didactic context typical of Śānti Parva: he explains karmic causality across births and underscores the certainty of death, using a vivid simile of sawdust scattered by wind to illustrate how time and death bring life’s course to its conclusion.