Shloka 20
Adhyāya 118: Saciva-parīkṣā
Testing and Appointment of Ministers/Servants
थ्वा त्वं द्वीपित्वमापन्नो द्वीपीव्याप्रत्वमागत:
tvaṃ tvam dvīpitvam āpanno dvīpīvyāpratvam āgataḥ
Bhīṣma said: “You have passed into the state of a leopard, and from the leopard you have advanced onward—thus moving through successive animal births. In this way you were first a dog, then a leopard, then entered the womb of a tiger; from a tiger you became an intoxicated elephant; from an elephant you came into the womb of a lion; and, having been a powerful lion, you again obtained the body of a śarabha.” The passage underscores the moral logic of saṃsāra: beings rise and fall through forms according to their dispositions and deeds, and mere increase of strength or dominance is not liberation but another turn of embodied existence.
भीष्म उवाच
Educational Q&A
The verse illustrates saṃsāra governed by karma: moving into stronger or more dominant bodies is still bondage to birth, and ethical purification—not mere power or predatory success—is what leads beyond repeated embodiment.
Bhīṣma addresses a being (or interlocutor) by recounting its sequence of animal incarnations—dog to leopard to tiger to elephant to lion to śarabha—using the progression as a didactic example about the continuity of rebirth and the consequences of one’s tendencies and actions.