Mahabharata — Shanti Parva, Shloka 66
अध्याय ३५१ — उञ्छवृत्ति-व्रतसिद्धेः मानुषस्य परमगतिः
Sūrya–Nāga Dialogue on the Perfected Gleaner-Ascetic
अपान्तरतमाश्रैव वेदाचार्य: स उच्यते । प्राचीनगर्भ तमृषिं प्रवदनन््तीह केचन
apāntaratam āśraiva vedācāryaḥ sa ucyate | prācīna-garbhaṃ tam ṛṣiṃ pravadantīha kecana ||
ဝိုင်ရှမ္ပါယနက ပြောသည်—«အပာန္တရတကို အားကိုးရာယူထားသဖြင့် သူကို ဝေဒ၏ အာစာရျဟု ခေါ်ကြသည်။ ထို့ပြင် ဤနေရာ၌ အချို့က ထိုရသီကို ‘ပရာချီန-ဂರ್ಭ’ ဟုလည်း ခေါ်ဆိုကြပြီး၊ ထိုနာမဖြင့် သူ၏ ရှေးဟောင်းဂုဏ်သိက္ခာနှင့် သာသနာတော်အတွင်း အာဏာတရားကို အတည်ပြုကြသည်»။
वैशम्पायन उवाच
Educational Q&A
The verse underscores the authority of Vedic knowledge as grounded in recognized lineages: one becomes known as a Vedic teacher by relying upon an established sage-tradition (here, Apāntarata), and epithets like ‘Prācīna-garbha’ emphasize the antiquity that legitimizes such transmission.
Vaiśampāyana reports a traditional identification: the figure connected with Apāntarata is regarded as a Vedic preceptor, and some authorities further refer to that sage by the epithet ‘Prācīna-garbha,’ highlighting his ancient, venerable status.