Shloka 26

Adhyāya 69: Strategic duels under Bhīṣma’s command

Virāṭa–Bhīṣma; Arjuna–Aśvatthāmā; Bhīma–Duryodhana; Abhimanyu–Lakṣmaṇa

Devanagari script

एतच्छुतं मया तात ऋषीणां भावितात्मनाम्‌ | वासुदेव॑ कथयतां समवाये पुरातनम्‌

Transliteration

etac chrutaṃ mayā tāta ṛṣīṇāṃ bhāvitātmanām | vāsudevaṃ kathayatāṃ samavāye purātanam ||

Translation

ဘီရှ္မက ပြောသည်– «ချစ်သားရေ၊ စိတ်နှလုံးသန့်စင်၍ သမာဓိပြည့်ဝသော ရှင်ရသီတို့၏ နှုတ်မှ ငါဤအကြောင်းကို ကြားနာခဲ့သည်။ ရှေးကာလတစ်ခါ၊ ထိုမဟာရသီတို့ စုဝေးသော ဂုဏ်သိက္ခာမြင့်မားသည့် အစည်းအဝေးတစ်ရပ်တွင်၊ ရှေးဟောင်းကာလမှ ပုရဏဂုဏ်တော်ဖြစ်သော ဝါစုဒေဝ၏ မဟာတ္တမကို ပြောကြားနေစဉ်၊ ငါသည် ထိုသူတို့ထံမှ ဤအကြောင်းအရာများကို နားထောင်ခဲ့သည်။»

Word by Word

• {'etat': 'this (teaching/account)', 'śrutam': 'heard

• received by oral tradition', 'mayā': 'by me', 'tāta': 'dear child

• affectionate address (to the listener)', 'ṛṣīṇām': 'of the seers/sages', 'bhāvitātmanām': 'of those with cultivated/purified selves

• self-controlled', 'vāsudevam': 'Vāsudeva (Kṛṣṇa), the divine person being praised', 'kathayatām': 'of those narrating/reciting', 'samavāye': 'in an assembly

• in a gathering', 'purātanam': 'ancient

Speaker

भीष्म उवाच

Characters & Entities

• Bhīṣma
• Vāsudeva (Kṛṣṇa)
• Ṛṣis (sages/seers)
• Samavāya (assembly/gathering)

Educational Q&A

What is the core teaching?

The verse grounds the forthcoming account in a trustworthy lineage: teachings about Vāsudeva are presented as received through an ancient assembly of self-purified sages, emphasizing ethical authority, disciplined minds, and faithful transmission.

What is happening in the narrative?

Bhīṣma tells his listener that what he is about to relate is not personal invention; he once heard it in a venerable gathering where great ṛṣis were narrating the ancient glory of Vāsudeva, and he is now repeating that received tradition.