Shloka 3

गोप्रदान-माहात्म्ये गोलोक-प्रश्नः

Gopradāna-Māhātmya: Inquiry into Goloka

Devanagari script

मध्यदेशे महान ग्रामो ब्राह्म॒णानां बभूव ह | गंगायमुनयोर्मध्ये यामुनस्य गिरेरध:

Transliteration

bhīṣma uvāca | madhyadeśe mahān grāmo brāhmaṇānāṃ babhūva ha | gaṅgāyamunayor madhye yāmunasya girer adhaḥ |

Translation

ဘိဿမက ပြောသည်— မဓျဒေသ၌ တစ်ခါက ဘြာဟ္မဏတို့၏ ကြီးမားသော ရွာတစ်ရွာ ရှိခဲ့သည်။ ၎င်းသည် ဂင်္ဂါနှင့် ယမုနာ မြစ်နှစ်စင်းကြား၊ ယမုနာတောင်၏ တောင်စောင်းအောက်ဘက်တွင် တည်ရှိ၏။ ဤအပိုဒ်သည် သင်ကြားမှုနှင့် စည်းကမ်းတရားကို အခြေခံသည့် နာမည်ကြီး ဘြာဟ္မဏရွာကို မိတ်ဆက်ကာ၊ သန့်ရှင်းသော မြေဒေသ၏ အာဏာနှင့် ပညာရှိတို့၏ အကျင့်အကြံကို အခြေခံသည့် ဓမ္မသင်ခန်းစာဆန်သော ဇာတ်ကြောင်းအတွက် အခင်းအကျင်းကို ပြင်ဆင်ပေးသည်။

Word by Word

• मध्यदेशे: in the Middle Country (Madhyadeśa)
• मध्यदेशे: Adhikarana
• Type: Noun
• Root: मध्यदेश
• Form: Masculine, Locative, Singular

• महान्: great
• Type: Adjective
• Root: महत्
• Form: Masculine, Nominative, Singular

• ग्रामः: village
• ग्रामः: Karta
• Type: Noun
• Root: ग्राम
• Form: Masculine, Nominative, Singular

• ब्राह्मणानाम्: of Brahmins
• Type: Noun
• Root: ब्राह्मण
• Form: Masculine, Genitive, Plural

• बभूव: was / came to be
• Type: Verb
• Root: भू
• Form: Perfect (Liṭ), 3rd, Singular

• ह: indeed (emphatic particle)
• Type: Indeclinable
• Root: ह

• गङ्गा-यमुनयोः: of the Ganges and Yamunā
• Type: Noun
• Root: गङ्गा + यमुना
• Form: Feminine, Genitive, Dual

• मध्ये: in the middle / between
• मध्ये: Adhikarana
• Type: Noun
• Root: मध्य
• Form: Neuter, Locative, Singular

• यामुनस्य: of (the) Yamuna-related / Yamuna (mountain/region)
• Type: Adjective
• Root: यामुन
• Form: Masculine, Genitive, Singular

• गिरेः: of the mountain
• Type: Noun
• Root: गिरि
• Form: Masculine, Genitive, Singular

• अधः: below / beneath
• अधः: Adhikarana
• Type: Indeclinable
• Root: अधस्

Speaker

भीष्म उवाच

Characters & Entities

• Bhīṣma
• Madhyadeśa
• Gaṅgā (river)
• Yamunā (river)
• Yāmuna-giri (mountain/region associated with Yamunā)
• Brāhmaṇas
• Grāma (Brahmin village/settlement)

Educational Q&A

What is the core teaching?

The verse establishes a dharmic setting: a Brahmin settlement in the revered Madhyadeśa between the Gaṅgā and Yamunā. By grounding the story in sacred geography and a community of learned Brahmins, the text signals that the forthcoming instruction is to be understood as authoritative and aligned with orthodox dharma.

What is happening in the narrative?

Bhīṣma begins a new illustrative account by describing the location of a famous Brahmin village situated between the Gaṅgā and Yamunā, below the Yāmuna mountain. This functions as scene-setting before introducing the people and events through which the moral teaching will be conveyed.