Mahabharata — Svargarohana Parva, Shloka 99

Devanagari script

दक्षिणा चात्र देया वै निष्कपञ्चसुवर्णकम्‌ | वाचकाय यथाशकक्‍त्या यथोक्तं फलमिच्छता

Transliteration

vaiśampāyana uvāca | dakṣiṇā cātra deyā vai niṣkapañcasuvarṇakam | vācakāya yathāśaktyā yathoktaṁ phalam icchatā ||

Translation

ဝိုင်ရှမ္ပာယန မိန့်ကြားသည်– ဤနေရာ၌လည်း ယဇ္ဈပူဇာအခကြေး (ဒက္ခိဏာ) အဖြစ် နိෂ္က ရွှေငါးပြားကို မဖြစ်မနေ ပေးသင့်သည်။ သာသနာကျမ်း၌ ဆိုထားသော အကျိုးကို လိုလားသူသည် မဟာဘာရတကို နားထောင်ပြီးနောက် မိမိတတ်နိုင်သမျှ အတိုင်း ရွတ်ဖတ်သူ/ဟောပြောသူအား ထိုဒက္ခိဏာကို ပေးလှူကာ သာသနာတော်၏ သင်ကြားပို့ဆောင်မှုကို လှူဒါန်းခြင်းဖြင့် ဂုဏ်ပြုရမည်။

Word by Word

• दक्षिणा: a gift-fee (dakṣiṇā)
• दक्षिणा: Karta
• Type: Noun
• Root: दक्षिणा
• Form: Feminine, Nominative, Singular

• च: and
• Type: Indeclinable
• Root: च

• अत्र: here
• अत्र: Adhikarana
• Type: Indeclinable
• Root: अत्र

• देया: is to be given / should be given
• Type: Verb
• Root: दा
• Form: Feminine, Nominative, Singular, Gerundive (भाव्य/तव्यत्-प्रत्ययार्थ), passive obligation

• वै: indeed
• Type: Indeclinable
• Root: वै

• निष्कपञ्चसुवर्णकम्: a set/amount of five gold coins (niṣkas)
• निष्कपञ्चसुवर्णकम्: Karma
• Type: Noun
• Root: निष्कपञ्चसुवर्णक
• Form: Neuter, Accusative, Singular

• वाचकाय: to the reciter
• वाचकाय: Sampradana
• Type: Noun
• Root: वाचक
• Form: Masculine, Dative, Singular

• यथाशक्त्या: according to one's ability
• Type: Indeclinable
• Root: यथाशक्ति

• यथोक्तम्: as stated
• Type: Adjective
• Root: यथोक्त
• Form: Neuter, Accusative, Singular, Past passive participle (क्त) from वच्/उच्

• फलम्: fruit/result
• फलम्: Karma
• Type: Noun
• Root: फल
• Form: Neuter, Accusative, Singular

• इच्छता: by/for one desiring
• इच्छता: Karana
• Type: Verb
• Root: इष्
• Form: Masculine, Instrumental, Singular, Present active participle (शतृ)

Speaker

वैशम्पायन उवाच

Characters & Entities

• Vaiśampāyana
• vācaka (reciter)
• dakṣiṇā
• niṣka
• suvarṇaka (gold coins)

Educational Q&A

What is the core teaching?

Sacred learning is to be honored through appropriate giving: after hearing the Mahābhārata, one should offer a dakṣiṇā to the reciter according to one’s means, aligning personal conduct with scriptural prescriptions for merit.

What is happening in the narrative?

In the concluding instructional context of the Svargārohaṇa section, Vaiśampāyana states a practical rule for listeners: the reciter of the Mahābhārata should be rewarded with a prescribed honorarium—symbolically expressed as five gold niṣkas—so that the listener may obtain the declared fruit of the hearing.