Shloka 8

Adhyāya 287 — Janaka’s Inquiry on Śreyas, Abhayadāna, and Asaṅga

Non-attachment

Devanagari script

भगवन्नाश्रमा: सर्वे पृथगाचारदर्शिन: । इदं श्रेय इदं श्रेय इति सर्वे प्रबोधिता:

Transliteration

bhagavann āśramāḥ sarve pṛthag-ācāra-darśinaḥ | idaṃ śreya idaṃ śreya iti sarve prabodhitāḥ ||

Translation

اے بھگون! زندگی کے تمام آشرم اپنے اپنے جداگانہ آداب و طریقے دکھاتے ہیں اور ‘یہی شریَہ ہے، یہی شریَہ ہے’ کہہ کر تعلیم دیتے ہیں—اپنے ہی ضابطے کی برتری جتا کر وہی یقین لوگوں کی سمجھ میں بٹھا دیتے ہیں۔

Word by Word

• {'bhagavan': 'venerable one

• revered lord (a respectful address)', 'āśramāḥ': 'the life-stages/ordered modes of life (student, householder, forest-dweller, renunciant)', 'sarve': 'all', 'pṛthak': 'separately

• distinctly', 'ācāra': 'conduct

• discipline', 'darśinaḥ': 'showing

• pointing out (lit. ‘seeing/causing to be seen’)', 'idaṃ': 'this', 'śreyaḥ': 'the good

• the highest welfare', 'iti': 'thus

• ‘so’ (quotative particle)', 'prabodhitāḥ': 'instructed

Speaker

भीष्म उवाच

Characters & Entities

• Bhishma
• āśramas (four life-stages)

Educational Q&A

What is the core teaching?

Bhishma highlights that different āśramas advocate different disciplines as ‘the highest good,’ shaping people’s convictions; this sets up the need to discern a unifying or higher criterion of dharma beyond sectarian self-assertion.

What is happening in the narrative?

In the Shanti Parva’s instruction on dharma, Bhishma addresses a revered interlocutor and observes that each life-stage promotes its own code as supreme, prompting further inquiry into which path truly leads to the highest welfare.