Shloka 60
नूनमाचरितं पापं मया पूर्वेषु जन्मसु । या पश्यामि हतानू पुत्रान् पौत्रान् भ्रातृश्ष माधव,“माधव! निश्चय ही मैंने पूर्वजन्मोंमें कोई बड़ा भारी पाप किया है, जिससे आज अपने पुत्रों, पौत्रों और भाइयोंको यहाँ मारा गया देख रही हूँ”
nūnam ācaritaṃ pāpaṃ mayā pūrveṣu janmasu | yā paśyāmi hatān putrān pautrān bhrātṝṃś ca mādhava ||
Surely, in former births I must have committed some grievous sin, O Mādhava; for now I behold my sons, my grandsons, and my brothers lying slain. The speaker interprets the catastrophe not merely as the outcome of war, but as a moral reckoning—an anguished attempt to find ethical meaning in overwhelming loss.
वैशम्पायन उवाच
Educational Q&A
The verse voices a common Mahābhārata ethical reflex: unbearable suffering is interpreted through karma—past wrongdoing (pāpa) is imagined as ripening into present grief. It highlights how humans seek moral causality and accountability when confronted with the devastation of war.
In Strī-parvan’s aftermath of Kurukṣetra, a bereaved woman addresses Kṛṣṇa as Mādhava and laments that she is seeing her sons, grandsons, and brothers slain. The line captures the immediate shock of mass familial loss and frames it as the fruit of past-life sin.