Shloka 62
Śuka’s Guṇa-Transcendence and Vyāsa’s Consolation (शुकगति-वर्णनम्)
अथ जीवति ते भर्ता प्रोषितो5प्यथवा क्वचित् | अगम्या परभार्येति चतुर्थो धर्मसंकर:
atha jīvati te bhartā proṣito 'py athavā kvacit | agamyā parabhāryeti caturtho dharmasaṅkaraḥ ||
Janaka said: “If your husband is still alive—even if he is merely away somewhere—then you are another man’s wife and therefore wholly inaccessible to me. In such a situation, this conduct becomes a fourth kind of moral confusion (dharmasaṅkara), a transgression that mixes and disrupts the proper boundaries of dharma.”
जनक उवाच
Educational Q&A
The verse asserts a clear ethical boundary: if a woman’s husband is alive—even if absent—she remains ‘another man’s wife’ and is therefore not a legitimate object of approach. Violating this boundary is framed as dharmasaṅkara, a disruptive moral confusion that undermines social and ethical order.
Janaka is speaking to a woman and evaluating the propriety of any relationship with her. He states that if her husband is living (even abroad), she is forbidden to him, and that any contrary behavior constitutes a specific category of fault termed the ‘fourth’ dharmasaṅkara.