Mahabharata — Shanti Parva, Shloka 18

Śuka’s Nirveda: Vyāsa’s Admonition on Dharma, Impermanence, and ‘Imperishable Wealth’ (अक्षय-धन)

Devanagari script

विरिक्तस्य यथा सम्यग्‌ घृतं भवति भेषजम्‌ | तथा निर्ह्ठतदोषस्य प्रेत्य धर्म: सुखावह:

Transliteration

viriktasya yathā samyag ghṛtaṃ bhavati bheṣajam | tathā nirhṛtadoṣasya pretya dharmaḥ sukhāvahaḥ ||

Translation

ဘီရှ္မက မိန့်တော်မူသည်– «ဝိရေချန (ဝမ်းသန့်စင်ခြင်း) ဖြင့် ကိုယ်အတွင်းကို ကောင်းစွာ သန့်စင်ပြီးသူအတွက် ဂျီ (ထောပတ်ရည်/clarified butter) သည် တကယ်တမ်း ဆေးဝါးကဲ့သို့ အကျိုးရှိသကဲ့သို့ပင်၊ အပြစ်နှင့် ချို့ယွင်းချက်တို့ကို ဖယ်ရှားပြီးသူအတွက်သာ ဓမ္မသည် နောက်ဘဝ၌ ချမ်းသာကို ဆောင်ကြဉ်းပေးသည်။ အတွင်းအညစ်အကြေးများကို ထုတ်ပယ်ပြီးမှသာ ဘာသာရေးကျင့်စဉ်၏ အသီးအပွင့်သည် ချိုမြိန်လာသည်»။

Word by Word

• {'viriktasya': 'of one who has been purged

• cleansed by purgation (medical cleansing)', 'yathā': 'just as

• in the manner that', 'samyak': 'properly

• correctly', 'ghṛtam': 'ghee

• clarified butter', 'bhavati': 'becomes

• proves to be', 'bheṣajam': 'medicine

• remedy', 'tathā': 'so

• in the same way', 'nirhṛta-doṣasya': 'of one whose दोष (faults/impurities) have been removed/expelled', 'doṣa': 'fault

• (also bodily ‘humor’ in Ayurveda)', 'pretya': 'after death

• in the hereafter', 'dharmaḥ': 'dharma

• moral/religious duty', 'sukhāvahaḥ': 'bringing happiness

Speaker

भीष्म उवाच

Characters & Entities

• Bhishma
• ghee (ghṛta)
• medicine (bheṣaja)
• purgation/cleansing (virecana implied)

Educational Q&A

What is the core teaching?

Dharma yields happiness in the afterlife only when a person has first removed inner दोष—moral impurities such as sin, vice, and corrupt motives. Like food that becomes medicine only for a cleansed body, religious merit becomes truly beneficial only for a purified character.

What is happening in the narrative?

In the Shanti Parva’s instruction section, Bhishma continues advising Yudhishthira on ethical life. Here he uses an Ayurvedic-style analogy—purgation followed by ghee as a remedy—to explain that spiritual practice works properly only after one has expelled moral and psychological impurities.