Mahabharata 11.25.46 — Stree Parva, Adhyaya 25, Shloka 46
स्त्री-विलापः — गान्धार्याः रणभूमिदर्शनं शापवचनं च
Battlefield Lament and Gāndhārī’s Curse
तवाप्येवं हतसुता निहतज्ञातिबान्धवा: । स्त्रिय: परिपतिष्यन्ति यथैता भरतस्त्रिय:
tavāpy evaṃ hatasutā nihatajñātibāndhavāḥ | striyaḥ paripatiṣyanti yathaitā bharatastriyaḥ ||
Vaiśampāyana dit : «De même, dans ta propre lignée, les femmes—privées de leurs fils, leurs parents et leurs proches abattus—s’effondreront de la même manière, comme ces femmes de la maison des Bharata se sont jetées sur les corps de ceux qu’elles aimaient.»
वैशम्पायन उवाच
Educational Q&A
The verse underscores the universal and reciprocal consequences of war: the same bereavement and collapse into grief that afflicts the Bharata women will also befall the women of the opposing side. It frames violence as producing predictable, shared human suffering across lineages.
In the Strīparvan’s lamentation setting after the great slaughter, the narrator (Vaiśampāyana) voices a grim parallel: as the Kuru/Bharata women mourn their dead, so too will women in the other lineage, once their sons and kinsmen are slain, fall upon the corpses of their relatives in the same manner.
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