Shloka 226
चित्रकार इवालेख्यं कृत्वा स्थापितवानसि । महाराज! ऐसा कोई उपाय कीजिये, जिससे इनका नाश न हो। महामते! जैसे चित्रकार किसी चित्रको बनाकर एक जगह रख देता है, उसी प्रकार आपने मुझको और धृतराष्ट्रको पहलेसे ही निकम्मा बनाकर रख दिया है
citrakāra ivālekhyaṃ kṛtvā sthāpitavān asi | mahārāja, eṣa ko'pi upāyaḥ kriyatā yena eṣāṃ nāśo na bhavet | mahāmate, yathā citrakāraḥ kañcid citraṃ kṛtvā ekasmin deśe sthāpayati, tathā tvayā mām ca dhṛtarāṣṭraṃ ca pūrvam eva niṣkriyaṃ kṛtvā sthāpitau |
Vidura said: “You have set things in place as a painter sets down a finished picture—fixed and unchanging. O King, devise some means by which these men may not be destroyed. O wise one, just as an artist completes a painting and then sets it aside, so you have, as it were, already rendered both me and Dhṛtarāṣṭra ineffective and left us apart.”
विदुर उवाच
Educational Q&A
Vidura urges the king to exercise moral agency and timely policy: a ruler must not become passive or allow events to harden into an irreversible ‘finished picture.’ Ethical governance requires active intervention to prevent needless destruction.
In the tense pre-war negotiations of the Udyoga Parva, Vidura addresses the king, warning that the situation has been allowed to become fixed and that both Vidura and Dhṛtarāṣṭra have been made ineffective. He presses the king to adopt a practical remedy to avert the coming ruin.