Shloka 4

इन्द्रेण वृत्रवधः, ब्रह्महत्याया अनुगमनम्, तथा च विभाजन-निवासविधानम्

Indra’s defeat of Vṛtra; pursuit by Brahmahatyā; allocation of her abodes

Devanagari script

पूर्वे समुद्रे यः पन्‍्था: स न गच्छति पश्चिमम्‌ एक: पन्था हि मोक्षस्य तन्मे विस्तरत: शृणु

Transliteration

pūrve samudre yaḥ panthāḥ sa na gacchati paścimam | ekaḥ panthā hi mokṣasya tan me vistarataḥ śṛṇu ||

Translation

ဘီရှ္မက မိန့်ကြားသည်– အရှေ့ဘက်သမုဒ္ဒရာသို့ ဦးတည်သည့် လမ်းတစ်လမ်းသည် ထိုလမ်းတစ်လမ်းတည်းဖြင့်ပင် အနောက်ဘက်သမုဒ္ဒရာသို့ မရောက်နိုင်။ ထိုနည်းတူပင် မောက္ခသို့ သွားရာတွင် မှန်ကန်သော လမ်းသည် တစ်လမ်းတည်းသာရှိသည်။ ထိုလမ်းကို ငါက အသေးစိတ် ပြောမည်၊ နားထောင်လော့။

Word by Word

• {'pūrve': 'in the east

• eastern', 'samudre': 'in the ocean/sea', 'yaḥ': 'which

• who', 'panthāḥ': 'path

• course', 'saḥ': 'that (path)

• it', 'na': 'not', 'gacchati': 'goes

• reaches', 'paścimam': 'to the west

• western', 'ekaḥ': 'one

• single', 'hi': 'indeed

• for', 'mokṣasya': 'of liberation

• of mokṣa', 'tan': 'that', 'me': 'from me

• my', 'vistarataḥ': 'in detail

• expansively', 'śṛṇu': 'hear

Speaker

भीष्म उवाच

Characters & Entities

• Bhīṣma
• mokṣa
• eastern ocean
• western ocean

Educational Q&A

What is the core teaching?

Liberation (mokṣa) is not attained by contradictory or divergent aims; it requires a single, consistent spiritual direction. Bhīṣma uses the image of a road to the eastern sea that cannot simultaneously reach the western sea to stress one-pointed commitment to the means of mokṣa.

What is happening in the narrative?

In Śānti Parva, Bhīṣma is instructing Yudhiṣṭhira on dharma and higher goals after the war. Here he introduces a focused teaching on mokṣa, preparing to explain—step by step—the disciplined path that leads to liberation.