Shloka 35
Adhyaya 8 — Harishchandra’s Trial: Truth, the Sale of Family, and Bondage to a Chandala
तात तात ! ददस्वान्नमम्बाम्ब ! भोजनं दद /
क्षुन्मे बलवती जाता जिह्वाग्रं शुष्यते तथा ॥
tāta tāta! dadasvānnam ambāmba! bhojanaṃ dada /
kṣun me balavatī jātā jihvāgraṃ śuṣyate tathā //
“അച്ഛാ, അച്ഛാ! എനിക്ക് അന്നം തരൂ; അമ്മേ, അമ്മേ! എനിക്ക് തിന്നാൻ എന്തെങ്കിലും തരൂ. എന്റെ വിശപ്പ് അത്യന്തം ശക്തമായി, നാവിന്റെ അറ്റവും ഉണങ്ങുന്നു.”
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FAQs
The verse foregrounds a basic dharmic duty: sustaining life through timely nourishment. In Purāṇic ethics, feeding the hungry—especially one’s dependents—is a primary obligation of the householder and a concrete expression of compassion (dayā). The bodily image (drying tongue) intensifies the urgency and underscores that neglect of basic care becomes a moral failing, not merely a social lapse.
This verse is not directly a pañcalakṣaṇa item (sarga, pratisarga, vaṃśa, manvantara, vaṃśānucarita). It functions as narrative/ethical texture within the Purāṇic storytelling (vaṃśānucarita-style human situations and dharma illustration), rather than cosmological or genealogical enumeration.
Hunger (kṣut) can be read symbolically as the pressing force of need that drives beings toward action (pravṛtti). The drying tongue points to the depletion of vital ease when sustenance—outer or inner—is withheld. In a Devi Mahatmya-adjacent setting, such human vulnerability often serves as contrast: worldly dependence versus the Goddess as the ultimate provider (annadā) and refuge, even when she is not explicitly named in this particular line.