Shloka 25
द्रोण–सात्यकि द्वैरथम्
Droṇa and Sātyaki: The Chariot Duel
ये लोका ४8४६ | ये चापि पितृघातिनाम् । गुरुदारगतानां ये पिशुनानां च ये सदा
ye lokāḥ | ye cāpi pitṛghātinām | gurudāragatānāṃ ye piśunānāṃ ca ye sadā
Arjuna said: “Those worlds (of suffering) that are assigned to the slayers of their fathers, and those also that fall to men who violate the wife of their teacher, and those that are for habitual slanderers—(to such realms do I deem myself bound if I commit this act).”
अजुन उवाच
Educational Q&A
The verse frames certain acts—patricide, violating the teacher’s wife, and habitual slander—as paradigmatic adharma with grave karmic consequences, using them as moral benchmarks to express the speaker’s fear of incurring comparable guilt.
In the Drona Parva’s intense battlefield context, Arjuna voices moral anguish and anticipates dire post-mortem consequences, invoking well-known categories of ‘great sins’ to articulate the ethical weight of the action being contemplated.