Shloka 32
त एव सभ्यास्तत्रासन् प्रेक्षकाश्नाभवन् सम ते । तत्रैषां ग्लहमानानां ध्रुवी जयपराजयौ
ta eva sabhyās tatrāsan prekṣakāś cābhavan samāḥ te | tatraiṣāṁ glahamānānāṁ dhruvī jayaparājayau ||
Sañjaya berkata: “Orang-orang yang dahulu menjadi penonton dalam permainan dadu itu hadir lagi di sana, kini duduk sebagai anggota dewan. Dan di situ, ketika para wira ini ‘memainkan’ pertaruhan perang, kemenangan bagi satu pihak dan kekalahan bagi pihak yang lain adalah sesuatu yang tidak dapat dielakkan—seakan telah ditetapkan dalam permainan yang ngeri itu.”
संजय उवाच
Educational Q&A
The verse frames war as a continuation of the moral failure of the dice-hall: the same social and political elite who once watched injustice now preside again, and the ‘wager’ of violence yields an unavoidable binary outcome—someone must win and someone must lose—highlighting the ethical cost of treating human lives like stakes in a game.
Sañjaya reports to Dhṛtarāṣṭra that the very people who were spectators during the earlier gambling episode are present again as courtly observers, and that in the present ‘game’—the battle—these warriors are effectively wagering their lives, with certain victory for one side and certain defeat for the other.