Shloka 19

Prāyaścitta-vidhāna: Tapas, Dāna, Vrata, and Proportional Expiation (प्रायश्चित्तविधानम्)

Devanagari script

जातिश्रेण्यधिवासानां कुलधर्माश्चव सर्वतः । वर्जयन्ति च ये धर्म तेषां धर्मो न विद्यते

Transliteration

jātiśreṇyadhivāsānāṁ kuladharmāś caiva sarvataḥ | varjayanti ca ye dharma teṣāṁ dharmo na vidyate ||

Translation

Vyāsa said: Those who, in every way, abandon the duties proper to their birth-group and social order, their station and mode of life, and the inherited obligations of their family—and who cast aside dharma itself—have no dharma left to appeal to. For such people, no expiation or corrective rite can truly restore purity, because the very ground of moral order has been rejected.

Word by Word

• {'jāti': 'birth-group

• caste/community by birth', 'śreṇī': 'guild

• class or corporate social grouping', 'adhivāsa': 'dwelling

• settled way of life (contextually: one’s established station)', 'kuladharma': 'family duty

• ancestral code of conduct', 'sarvataḥ': 'entirely

• in every respect', 'varjayanti': 'they abandon

• they exclude', 'dharma': 'duty

• sustaining order', 'teṣām': 'for them

• of those people', 'na vidyate': 'does not exist

Speaker

व्यास उवाच

Characters & Entities

• Vyāsa

Educational Q&A

What is the core teaching?

If a person rejects the foundational duties tied to social identity (jāti/śreṇī), life-situation (adhivāsa), and family tradition (kuladharma), and even abandons dharma as a principle, then there remains no moral framework through which expiation can operate; reform presupposes acceptance of dharma.

What is happening in the narrative?

In the Śānti Parva’s instruction on righteous conduct, Vyāsa states a strict ethical principle: deliberate abandonment of one’s rightful duties and of dharma itself places a person outside the remedial scope of prāyaścitta (expiation), because the person has renounced the very authority that makes correction meaningful.