Shloka 9

Daiva–Puruṣakāra Saṃvāda

Kṛpa’s Counsel on Destiny and Human Effort

Devanagari script

इस प्रकार श्रीमह्याभारत सौप्तिकपर्वमें अश्वत्थामाकी मन्त्रणाविषयक पहला अध्याय पूरा हुआ

Transliteration

sañjaya uvāca | tābhyāṃ sarve hi kāryārthā manuṣyāṇāṃ nararṣabha | viceṣṭantaḥ sama dṛśyante nivṛttās tu tathaiva ca | narāśreṣṭha! manuṣyōṃ ke pravṛtti aura nivṛtti-sambandhī sāre kārya daiva aura puruṣārtha donoṃ se hī siddha hote dekhe jāte haiṃ |

Translation

စဉ္ဇယက ပြောသည်— အို လူတို့အနက် နွားထီးကဲ့သို့ သန်မာသူရေ၊ လူသားတို့၏ လုပ်ငန်းဆောင်တာ အားလုံးသည် ဤနှစ်ပါး—ကံတရားနှင့် ကိုယ်တိုင်ကြိုးပမ်းမှု—တို့ကြောင့်သာ ပြီးမြောက်သည်ဟု မြင်ရသည်။ လူတို့သည် လှုပ်ရှားကြိုးပမ်းနေသည်ဖြစ်စေ၊ လုပ်ဆောင်မှုမှ နုတ်ထွက်နေသည်ဖြစ်စေ၊ ထွက်ပေါ်လာသော အကျိုးရလဒ်တို့သည် ကံနှင့် ကြိုးပမ်းမှုတို့၏ ပူးပေါင်းလုပ်ဆောင်မှုမှ ဖြစ်လာသကဲ့သို့ ထင်ရှားသည်။

Word by Word

• {'tābhyām': 'by those two (i.e., by both factors)', 'sarve': 'all', 'kāryārthāḥ': 'purposes to be achieved

• intended tasks/ends', 'manuṣyāṇām': 'of human beings', 'nararṣabha': 'O bull among men (honorific address)', 'viceṣṭantaḥ': 'those who strive

• those engaged in effort', 'sama': 'equally

• in the same manner', 'dṛśyante': 'are seen

• are observed', 'nivṛttāḥ': 'those who have withdrawn

• those who desist from action', 'tathaiva': 'just so

• likewise', 'narāśreṣṭha': 'O best of men (honorific address)', 'pravṛtti': 'engagement in action

• active pursuit', 'nivṛtti': 'withdrawal

• cessation/renunciation of action', 'daiva': 'fate

• the divine dispensation', 'puruṣārtha': 'human effort

Speaker

संजय उवाच

Characters & Entities

• Sanjaya

Educational Q&A

What is the core teaching?

The verse teaches a balanced view: human outcomes arise through the combined operation of daiva (destiny) and puruṣārtha (personal effort). It cautions against absolutizing either—neither pure fatalism nor pure self-reliance alone explains results.

What is happening in the narrative?

Sanjaya offers a reflective general principle to the listener (addressed as ‘best of men’), framing human action in terms of pravṛtti (active striving) and nivṛtti (withdrawal). This sets an ethical-philosophical tone within the Sauptika Parva’s grim aftermath of war.