Shloka 10

Kośārtha-Rājadharma: Ethical Revenue Collection and Social Regulation (कोशार्थ-राजधर्मः)

Devanagari script

तस्मात्‌ सर्वसमारम्भो दुर्लभ: पुरुषं प्रति । यथामुख्यान्‌ सान्त्वयित्वा भोक्तव्य इतरो जन:

Transliteration

tasmāt sarva-samārambho durlabhaḥ puruṣaṃ prati | yathā-mukhyān sāntvayitvā bhoktavya itaro janaḥ ||

Translation

ဘီရှ္မက ပြောသည်– ထို့ကြောင့် လူအားလုံးကို တစ်ပြိုင်နက်တည်း လက်အောက်ခံအောင် ကြိုးစားခြင်းသည် အလွန်ခက်ခဲ၏။ မင်းသည် အရင်ဆုံး အရေးကြီးသူများကို နူးညံ့သိမ်မွေ့သော သဘောတူညီစေသော စကားဖြင့် စိတ်သက်သာစေကာ ကိုယ်ဘက်သို့ ဆွဲယူရမည်။ ထို့နောက် ကျန်သော သာမန်ပြည်သူတို့ကို အခြေအနေလိုအပ်သလို စီမံခန့်ခွဲ၍ အသုံးချနိုင်၏။

Word by Word

• {'tasmāt': 'therefore

• for that reason', 'sarva-samārambhaḥ': 'a comprehensive undertaking

• an attempt to deal with everyone at once', 'durlabhaḥ': 'hard to obtain

• difficult to accomplish', 'puruṣam prati': 'with respect to men/people

• in dealing with persons', 'yathā-mukhyān': 'the principal/leading ones

• the foremost persons (according to rank/influence)', 'sāntvayitvā': 'having consoled/placated

• having won over by gentle persuasion', 'madhura-vacana (implied by context)': 'sweet speech

• conciliatory words', 'bhoktavyaḥ': 'to be used/managed/enjoyed

• to be dealt with appropriately', 'itaraḥ janaḥ': 'the other people

Speaker

भीष्य उवाच

Characters & Entities

• Bhishma

Educational Q&A

What is the core teaching?

Effective rule is gradual and strategic: it is unrealistic to control everyone simultaneously, so a ruler should first secure the loyalty of key leaders through gentle persuasion, and then manage the wider populace through orderly administration.

What is happening in the narrative?

In the Śānti Parva’s instruction on rāja-dharma, Bhīṣma advises the king on practical governance—prioritizing influential persons for conciliation and thereby stabilizing the realm before dealing with the general public.