Chapter 4 · Knowledge and the renunciation of action
Bhagavad Gita 4.8
Age after age, to establish dharma.
Shri Bhagavan
परित्राणाय साधूनां विनाशाय च दुष्कृताम् ।
धर्मसंस्थापनार्थाय सम्भवामि युगे युगे ॥
paritrāṇāya sādhūnāṁ vināśāya ca duṣkṛtām / dharmasaṁsthāpanārthāya sambhavāmi yuge yuge
To protect those who are good, to put an end to those who do harm, and to set dharma firmly in place again, I come into being age after age.
हिंदी · साधुओं की रक्षा के लिए, दुष्कर्म करने वालों के नाश के लिए, और धर्म को फिर से दृढ़ रूप से स्थापित करने के लिए मैं युग-युग में प्रकट होता हूँ।
What it means
Age after age, to establish dharma.
To protect the good, to destroy the wicked, and to establish dharma firmly, I appear in every age.
This is the Trust’s own reading, written for this site. The verse above it is the text.
Verses that share its vocabulary
Near it in the text’s own words.
- 4.7Whenever dharma grows weak and what stands against dharma rises up, Bharata, at that time I send myself forth into the world.
- 1.1Tell me, Sanjaya: gathered on the field of dharma, the field of the Kurus, eager to fight, what did my sons and the sons of Pandu do?
- 1.40When a family is destroyed, the ancient duties of that family perish with it; and when those duties are gone, lawlessness overtakes the whole family.
- 1.41Krishna, when lawlessness prevails, the women of the family are corrupted; and when the women are corrupted, Varshneya, the mixing of social orders follows.
- 1.43By these wrongs of the destroyers of a family, wrongs that bring about the mixing of social orders, the lasting duties of caste and of family are wiped out.
- 1.44Janardana, we have heard it said that men whose family duties have been destroyed are certain to dwell in hell.
Chosen by shared uncommon vocabulary, weighted so that a rare word counts for far more than a common one. A reading aid, not a claim that these verses mean the same thing.