Shloka 14
Kṣātra-dharma in Campaign and Battle: Protection, Purification, and the Ideal Warrior’s End (क्षात्रधर्मः—अभियानयुद्धे रक्षणदानशुद्धिः)
समरभूमिमें उसके शरीरसे जो रक्त बहता है, उस रक्तके साथ ही वह सम्पूर्ण पापोंसे मुक्त हो जाता है ।। यानि दुःखानि सहते क्षत्रियो युधि तापित: । तेन तेन तपो भूय इति धर्मविदो विदु:
samarabhūmau tasya śarīrāt yo raktaḥ sravati, tena raktena saha sa sarvapāpebhyaḥ pramucyate. yāni duḥkhāni sahate kṣatriyo yudhi tāpitaḥ, tena tena tapo bhūya iti dharmavido viduḥ.
Бхишма сказал: «На поле брани, какая бы кровь ни текла из тела воина, — вместе с этой кровью он освобождается от всех грехов. Ибо тяготы, которые кшатрий переносит в битве, опаляемый жаром сражения, в той же мере умножают его тапас (аскезу); так понимают знатоки дхармы».
भीष्म उवाच
Educational Q&A
Bhishma frames the righteous hardships of battle for a kshatriya as a form of tapas: disciplined endurance that purifies. The verse asserts that suffering and bloodshed borne in the line of duty (not for greed or cruelty) is understood by dharma-knowers as expiatory, loosening the bonds of sin.
In the Shanti Parva’s instruction on dharma after the war, Bhishma teaches Yudhishthira about duties and moral logic for different social roles. Here he explains how the kshatriya’s battlefield ordeal—its pain, heat, and bleeding—functions as a purifying consequence of fulfilling one’s ordained protective duty.