Mahabharata — Anushasana Parva, Shloka 33
Cyavana’s Water-Vow and the Ethics of Cohabitation (स्नेह-सम्वास-धर्मः)
न तस्यां जातु तिष्ठन्त्यामन्या तत् कर्तुमहति । ब्राह्मणी त्वेव कुर्याद् वा ब्राह्मणस्य युधिष्ठिर
na tasyāṃ jātu tiṣṭhantyām anyā tat kartum arhati | brāhmaṇī tv eva kuryād vā brāhmaṇasya yudhiṣṭhira ||
ဘီရှ္မက ပြောသည်– «ဗြာဟ္မဏမယားသည် ရှိနေသရွေ့ အခြားမိန်းမတစ်ဦးတစ်ယောက်မျှ ထိုတာဝန်များကို ဆောင်ရွက်ခွင့်မရှိ။ ဗြာဟ္မဏခင်ပွန်းအတွက် သတ်မှတ်ထားသော ဝတ္တရားဆောင်ရွက်မှုကို လုပ်ဆောင်ရမည်မှာ ဗြာဟ္မဏမယားတစ်ဦးတည်းသာ ဖြစ်သည်၊ အို ယုဓိဋ္ဌိရ»။
भीष्म उवाच
Educational Q&A
The verse asserts an exclusivity of household-religious service within the Brahmin household: when the Brahmin wife is present, she alone is considered entitled to perform the prescribed domestic and ritual services for her Brahmin husband, reflecting the text’s varṇāśrama-based norms of duty and propriety.
In Anuśāsana Parva, Bhīṣma instructs Yudhiṣṭhira on dharma. Here he specifies a rule about who may perform certain household and ritual duties in a Brahmin home, emphasizing that these are to be done by the brāhmaṇī herself and not by another woman while she is present.