Shloka 5

Devanagari script

हत्वा तु नृपतिं पार्थ अकरिष्य: किमुत्तरम्‌ एवं हि दुर्विदो धर्मो मन्दप्रज्ञैर्विशेषत:

Transliteration

hatvā tu nṛpatiṃ pārtha akariṣyaḥ kim uttaram | evaṃ hi durvido dharmo mandaprajñair viśeṣataḥ ||

Translation

Sañjaya nói: “Hỡi Pārtha, nếu đã giết một đức vua, ngươi còn biết đi theo con đường nào nữa? Bởi lẽ bản tính của dharma thật khó phân định; nhất là với kẻ trí tuệ kém cỏi, những vận hành tinh vi của nó lại càng khó thấu.”

Word by Word

• {'hatvā': 'having slain, after killing (absolutive of √han)', 'tu': 'but, indeed', 'nṛpatim': 'the king (accusative singular)', 'pārtha': 'O son of Pṛthā (Arjuna), vocative', 'akariṣyaḥ': 'you would do / you would undertake (2nd person singular, future/conditional sense in context)', 'kim': 'what?', 'uttaram': 'the further step

• what comes next', 'evaṃ': 'thus, in this manner', 'hi': 'indeed, for', 'durvidaḥ (durvido)': 'hard to know, difficult to understand', 'dharmaḥ': 'dharma

• right conduct', 'mandaprajñaiḥ': 'by/for those of dull intellect (instrumental plural)', 'viśeṣataḥ': 'especially, in particular'}

Speaker

संजय उवाच

Characters & Entities

• Sañjaya
• Pārtha (Arjuna)
• nṛpati (a king)

Educational Q&A

What is the core teaching?

The verse stresses that dharma is subtle and difficult to judge, especially for limited understanding; therefore one should be cautious about confident moral claims regarding acts like killing a king and what duty demands afterward.

What is happening in the narrative?

Sañjaya addresses Arjuna (Pārtha) with a probing ethical question—after the act of slaying a king, what would you do next?—and uses it to underline how hard it is to discern the correct course of dharma in wartime dilemmas.