Shloka 26

Rukmī’s Offer of Aid and Arjuna’s Refusal (रुक्मिप्रस्तावः—अर्जुनप्रत्याख्यानम्)

Devanagari script

वैशम्पायन उवाच ततः सेनापतिं चक्रे विधिवद्‌ भूरिदक्षिणम्‌ । धृतराष्ट्रात्मजो भीष्म सोडभिषिक्तो व्यरोचत

Transliteration

vaiśampāyana uvāca tataḥ senāpatiṁ cakre vidhivad bhūridakṣiṇam | dhṛtarāṣṭrātmajo bhīṣmaṁ so 'bhiṣikto vyarocat ||

Translation

ဝိုင်ရှမ္ပာယနက ပြောသည်— ထို့နောက် ဓೃತရာෂ္ဋ၏သား ဒုရ്യೋಧနသည် ထုံးတမ်းအတိုင်း အလှူအတန်းများစွာဖြင့် ဂုဏ်ပြုကာ ဘီရှ္မကို စစ်တပ်အကြီးအကဲအဖြစ် ခန့်အပ်하였다။ အဘိသိက္က ပြီးသွားသောအခါ ဘီရှ္မသည် ပိုမိုတောက်ပသန့်ရှင်းလာကာ ထမ်းဆောင်ရမည့် တာဝန်ကြီး၏ အပြင်ပန်းလက္ခဏာကို ပြသ하였다။

Word by Word

• {'tataḥ': 'then, thereafter', 'senāpatiṁ': 'commander-in-chief

• leader of the army', 'cakre': 'made, appointed', 'vidhivat': 'according to rule/rite

• duly, in proper form', 'bhūri-dakṣiṇam': 'with abundant dakṣiṇā

• accompanied by lavish gifts/fees to officiants', 'dhṛtarāṣṭra-ātmajaḥ': 'son of Dhṛtarāṣṭra (i.e., Duryodhana)', 'bhīṣmam': 'Bhīṣma', 'abhiṣiktaḥ': 'consecrated, anointed (installed in office)', 'vyarocat': 'shone forth

Speaker

वैशम्पायन उवाच

Characters & Entities

• Vaiśampāyana
• Janamejaya
• Dhṛtarāṣṭra
• Duryodhana
• Bhīṣma
• senāpati (office of commander-in-chief)
• abhiṣeka (consecration/anointing rite)
• dakṣiṇā (ritual gifts)

Educational Q&A

What is the core teaching?

The verse highlights how power and war are often formalized through proper rites and public legitimacy (vidhivat, abhiṣeka), yet ethical weight remains: a righteous elder like Bhīṣma can be placed in command by an unrighteous claimant, showing the tension between procedural dharma (correct ritual/office) and moral dharma (just cause).

What is happening in the narrative?

After preparations for conflict, Duryodhana formally installs Bhīṣma as the Kaurava commander-in-chief, performing the consecration according to prescribed rites and distributing abundant gifts; once anointed, Bhīṣma appears resplendent in his new martial authority.