Shloka 8

युधिष्ठिरप्रश्नः—विश्वामित्रस्य ब्राह्मणत्वकौतूहलम् | Yudhiṣṭhira’s Inquiry on Viśvāmitra’s Attainment of Brāhmaṇya

Devanagari script

नाभिवादयते ज्येष्ठं देवरातं नराधिप । पुत्रा: पज्चाशदेवापि शप्ता: श्वपचतां गता:

Transliteration

Yudhiṣṭhira uvāca: nābhivādayate jyeṣṭhaṃ Devarātaṃ narādhipa; putrāḥ pañcāśad evāpi śaptāḥ śvapacatāṃ gatāḥ.

Translation

အို မင်းမြတ်၊ ဒေဝတားတို့ ပေးအပ်သဖြင့် ဒေဝရာတ (Devarāta) ဟု အမည်ကျော်သော သုနရှေပါသည် ဗိဿဝာမိတ္တရ၏ အကြီးဆုံးသား ဖြစ်လာ하였다။ သို့သော် ဗိဿဝာမိတ္တရ၏ အခြားသား ငါးဆယ်တို့သည် အကြီးအကဲဟု မသတ်မှတ်ဘဲ မကန်တော့ကြသဖြင့်၊ ဗိဿဝာမိတ္တရ၏ ကျိန်စာကြောင့် သူတို့အားလုံးသည် śvapaca (အပြင်လူ/အောက်တန်း) အဖြစ်သို့ ကျရောက်သွားကြ၏။

Word by Word

• {'nābhivādayate': 'did not salute / did not pay respectful obeisance', 'jyeṣṭham': 'the eldest (son/brother)

• senior-most', 'Devarātam': 'Devarāta (proper name

• here, Viśvāmitra’s eldest son, also associated with Śunaḥśepa in later tradition)', 'narādhipa': 'O ruler of men

• king', 'putrāḥ': 'sons', 'pañcāśat': 'fifty', 'eva': 'indeed

• even', 'api': 'also

• even', 'śaptāḥ': 'cursed', 'śvapaca': 'dog-cooker

• a term for an outcaste/caṇḍāla in classical usage', 'śvapacatām gatāḥ': 'went to the state/condition of śvapacas (became outcastes)'}

Speaker

युधिछिर उवाच

Characters & Entities

• Yudhiṣṭhira
• Devarāta
• Viśvāmitra
• Śunaḥśepa
• the fifty sons of Viśvāmitra
• narādhipa (the addressed king)

Educational Q&A

What is the core teaching?

The verse stresses that honoring the rightful senior (jyeṣṭha) is a duty within dharma; deliberate refusal of respect is treated as a serious moral fault that can bring severe consequences.

What is happening in the narrative?

Yudhiṣṭhira recounts that Devarāta, the eldest, was not saluted by his younger brothers; as a result, they were cursed and are said to have become śvapacas (outcastes).