Shloka 65

Daṇḍanīti and the King as the Cause of Yuga-Order (दण्डनीतिः राजधर्मश्च युगकारणत्वम्)

Devanagari script

तथा जनपदाश्रैव पुरं च कुरुनन्दन । एतत्‌ सप्तात्मकं राज्यं परिपाल्यं प्रयत्नत:

Transliteration

tathā janapadāś caiva puraṁ ca kurunandana | etat saptātmakaṁ rājyaṁ paripālyaṁ prayatnataḥ ||

Translation

ဘီရှ္မက မိန့်တော်မူသည်– «ကူရုတို့၏ အားရစရာသူရဲကောင်းရေ၊ ထိုနည်းတူပင် နယ်မြေပြည်သူပြည်သားနှင့် မြို့တော်ကိုလည်း ကာကွယ်ရမည်။ နိုင်ငံတော်သည် အင်္ဂါခုနစ်ပါးဖြင့် ဖွဲ့စည်းထားသဖြင့် ထိုအားလုံးကို အလွန်အမင်း ကြိုးပမ်း၍ ထိန်းသိမ်းစောင့်ရှောက်ရမည်»။

Word by Word

• {'tathā': 'likewise

• in the same manner', 'janapadāḥ': 'territories and their people

• the realm/countryside (districts)', 'ca eva': 'and indeed

• also', 'puram': 'city

• capital/fortified town', 'kurunandana': 'O Kurus’ delight (address to the Kuru prince, i.e., Yudhiṣṭhira)', 'etat': 'this', 'saptātmakaṁ': 'having seven constituents

• seven-limbed', 'rājyam': 'kingdom

• state', 'paripālyam': 'to be protected/maintained

• to be governed and preserved', 'prayatnataḥ': 'with effort

Speaker

भीष्म उवाच

Characters & Entities

• Bhishma
• Kurunandana (Yudhishthira)
• janapada (realm/territory)
• pura (city/capital)
• rājya (kingdom)

Educational Q&A

What is the core teaching?

A king must preserve the kingdom as a seven-part organism (saptātmaka/saptāṅga): governance is sustained by protecting its key supports—especially the realm (janapada) and the city (pura)—with constant diligence.

What is happening in the narrative?

In the Śānti Parva’s instruction on rājadhrama, Bhishma addresses Yudhiṣṭhira and continues outlining what a ruler must safeguard, emphasizing that the state has essential limbs and must be maintained through careful, sustained effort.