Shloka 9

Varṇāśrama-ācāra and Vikarma: Yudhiṣṭhira’s Inquiry on Safe Dharmas (शिवधर्मप्रश्नः)

Devanagari script

निराशी: स्यात्‌ सर्वसमो निर्भोगो निर्विकारवान्‌ | विप्र: क्षेमाश्रमं प्राप्तो गच्छत्यक्षरसात्मताम्‌

Transliteration

nirāśī syāt sarvasamo nirbhogo nirvikāravān | vipraḥ kṣemāśramaṃ prāpto gacchaty akṣarasātmatām ||

Translation

ဘီရှ္မက မိန့်ကြားသည်– «မျှော်လင့်ချက်ကင်းစေ၊ အားလုံးအပေါ် တန်းတူစိတ်ထားစေ၊ အာရုံခံစားမှုအပျော်အပါးတို့မှ ကင်းဝေးစေ၊ နှလုံးအတွင်း ပြောင်းလဲမှု (ဝိကာရ) မရှိအောင် တည်ငြိမ်စေ။ ‘က்ஷေမ-အာရှရမ’ ဟူသော ကောင်းကျိုးနှင့် လုံခြုံမှုသို့ ဦးတည်သော အာရှရမသို့ ဝင်ရောက်လာသော ဗြာဟ္မဏသည် မဖျက်ဆီးနိုင်သော (အက္ခရာ) ဗြဟ္မန်နှင့် တစ်လုံးတစ်ဝတည်း ဖြစ်လာသည်»။

Word by Word

• निराशीः: free from hope/desire
• निराशीः: Karta
• Type: Adjective
• Root: निराशिन्
• Form: Masculine, Nominative, Singular

• स्यात्: should be
• Type: Verb
• Root: अस् (भू)
• Form: Optative, 3rd, Singular, Parasmaipada

• सर्वसमः: equal towards all
• सर्वसमः: Karta
• Type: Adjective
• Root: सर्वसम
• Form: Masculine, Nominative, Singular

• निर्भोगः: without indulgence/enjoyment
• निर्भोगः: Karta
• Type: Adjective
• Root: निर्भोग
• Form: Masculine, Nominative, Singular

• निर्विकारवान्: free from modifications/perturbations
• निर्विकारवान्: Karta
• Type: Adjective
• Root: निर्विकारवत्
• Form: Masculine, Nominative, Singular

• विप्रः: a Brahmin
• विप्रः: Karta
• Type: Noun
• Root: विप्र
• Form: Masculine, Nominative, Singular

• क्षेमाश्रमम्: the kṣema-āśrama (peaceful/secure hermitage-stage)
• क्षेमाश्रमम्: Karma
• Type: Noun
• Root: क्षेमाश्रम
• Form: Masculine, Accusative, Singular

• प्राप्तः: having attained
• Type: Verb
• Root: प्र-आप्
• Form: क्त, Masculine, Nominative, Singular

• गच्छति: goes/attains
• Type: Verb
• Root: गम्
• Form: Present, 3rd, Singular, Parasmaipada

• अक्षरसात्मताम्: identity with the imperishable (Brahman)
• अक्षरसात्मताम्: Karma
• Type: Noun
• Root: अक्षरसात्मता
• Form: Feminine, Accusative, Singular

Speaker

भीष्म उवाच

Characters & Entities

• Bhishma
• vipra (brahmin)
• kṣemāśrama
• akṣara (Imperishable Brahman)

Educational Q&A

What is the core teaching?

The verse teaches a renunciant ethic: abandon expectation and craving, maintain equal regard for all, avoid sense-indulgence, and remain inwardly unperturbed; such discipline in the kṣema-āśrama culminates in realization of oneness with the Imperishable Brahman.

What is happening in the narrative?

In the Shanti Parva’s instruction section, Bhishma is advising on dharma and the life of spiritual discipline; here he describes the qualities of a brahmin/renunciant who enters the kṣema-āśrama and the ultimate result—attainment of identity with akṣara (Brahman).