Shloka 293
सबालवृद्धा: क्रन्दन्तस्तेषु धर्म: कथं भवेत् । “जो शाकलनिवासी आबालवृद्ध नर-नारी मदिरासे उन्मत्त हो चिल्ला-चिल्लाकर ऐसी गाथाएँ गाया करते हैं, उनमें धर्म कैसे रह सकता है?”
sabālavṛddhāḥ krandantas teṣu dharmaḥ kathaṃ bhavet
Karna said: “When even children and the aged are wailing aloud among them, how can dharma possibly remain there? In a place where the people—men and women of all ages—are driven mad by liquor and shout and sing such ballads, what room is left for righteousness?”
कर्ण उवाच
Educational Q&A
Karna frames dharma as inseparable from social restraint and humane conduct: where intoxication, loud disorder, and the suffering cries of the vulnerable prevail, moral order cannot be sustained.
Karna is speaking critically about a community (associated with Śākala in the accompanying gloss), portraying it as morally degraded—people of all ages intoxicated and shouting—using this as evidence that dharma is absent there.