Shloka 18
दानपात्रापात्र-निर्णयः / Determining Worthy Gifts, Recipients, and Permissible Food
युधिछिर उवाच वैशसं सुमहत् कृत्वा ज्ञातीनां रोमहर्षणम् । आगस्कृत् सर्वलोकस्य पृथिवीनाशकारक:
yudhiṣṭhira uvāca
vaiśaṃsaṃ sumahat kṛtvā jñātīnāṃ romaharṣaṇam |
āgaskṛt sarvalokasya pṛthivīnāśakārakaḥ ||
Yudhiṣṭhira said: “Having committed a very great act of cruelty—bringing about a hair-raising slaughter of my own kinsmen—I have become an offender against all the worlds. I have been the cause of the destruction of the earth.”
युधिछिर उवाच
Educational Q&A
The verse foregrounds moral accountability after violence: even when victory is achieved, the agent must confront the ethical weight of cruelty and the far-reaching harm done to kin, society, and the world-order (loka).
In the aftermath of the Kurukṣetra war, Yudhiṣṭhira speaks in grief and self-reproach, describing the war as a cruel, terrifying destruction of his own relatives and as a wrongdoing that implicates him before all beings.