Shloka 376
उत्पातवर्णनम् (Utpāta-varṇanam) — Catalogue of Portents
सहस्रशो महाशब्द: शिखराणि पतन्ति च । जान पड़ता है, यह भूमि सहस्रों भूमिपालोंका रक्तपान करेगी। प्रभो! कैलास, मन्दराचल तथा हिमालयसे सहसों प्रकारके अत्यन्त भयानक शब्द प्रकट होते हैं और उनके शिखर भी टूट-टूटकर गिर रहे हैं
sahasraśo mahāśabdaḥ śikharāṇi patanti ca |
Vyāsa said: “From every side arise thunderous, terrifying sounds in their thousands, and even the mountain-peaks are breaking off and falling. Such portents suggest that this earth is about to drink the blood of countless kings—an ominous forewarning of the vast, unrighteous slaughter that war unleashes when dharma is eclipsed by ambition.”
व्यास उवाच
Educational Q&A
The verse frames war as a moral catastrophe whose approach is mirrored by nature’s disturbance: when rulers abandon restraint and dharma, the world itself seems to protest, warning that mass violence will bring collective suffering and irreversible loss.
Vyāsa reports ominous signs—terrifying sounds and collapsing mountain peaks—interpreted as foretelling the imminent Kurukṣetra slaughter in which innumerable kings will die, and the earth will be metaphorically ‘sated’ with their blood.