How to read a Sanskrit shloka

A shloka looks forbidding: two lines of long, unbroken words in an order that seems upside down. Yet students have been taught to open such verses for many centuries by a simple, fixed method. It has four steps. This page explains them and then applies them to the most famous verse of the Bhagavad Gita.

What a shloka is

Strictly, a श्लोक (shloka) is a verse in one particular metre, the anushtubh: four quarters (पाद, pada) of eight syllables each, thirty-two syllables in all, usually printed as two lines of sixteen. The Ramayana, the Mahabharata and most of the Gita are in this metre. In everyday use the word has come to mean any Sanskrit verse.

The end of the first line is marked with one stroke (।) and the end of the verse with two (॥), often with the verse number.

Step 1: Split the words (pada-chchheda)

Sanskrit joins neighbouring words by sandhi, so the first job is to take them apart again. Look for the usual signs: an avagraha (ऽ), a long vowel where two words may have met, a य् or व् before a vowel, a visarga changed to स्, र् or ओ.

Step 2: Find the verb

The verb is the anchor. Its ending tells you the person and number of the doer. Verbs end in forms such as -ति, -न्ति, -सि, -मि, -ते, -तु. Sometimes the verb "is" is simply left out and has to be supplied.

Step 3: Label each word by its ending

Find the doer in the first case, the object in the second, and so on, using the case endings. Mark the little unchanging words, the avyayas, such as न, च, एव, मा, हि. Join each adjective to the noun that has the same case, number and gender.

Step 4: Put the words in prose order (anvaya)

Now rearrange: doer, its describing words, object, other words, verb. This prose order is called the अन्वय (anvaya). Once the anvaya is written, the verse reads almost like Hindi, and the meaning follows.

Worked example: Bhagavad Gita 2.47

कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन ।
मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि ॥

Step 1, split. कर्मणि एव अधिकारः ते, मा फलेषु कदाचन। मा कर्मफलहेतुः भूः, मा ते सङ्गः अस्तु अकर्मणि।

The sandhis undone: कर्मणि + एव = कर्मण्येव (yan); एव + अधिकारः = एवाधिकारः (dirgha); अधिकारः + ते = अधिकारस्ते (visarga to स्); हेतुः + भूः = हेतुर्भूः and भूः + मा = भूर्मा (visarga to र्); सङ्गः + अस्तु = सङ्गोऽस्तु (visarga to ओ, with avagraha); अस्तु + अकर्मणि = अस्त्वकर्मणि (yan).

Step 2, the verbs. भूः ("be", used with मा for "do not be") and अस्तु ("let there be"). In the first half there is no verb; "is" has to be supplied.

Step 3, the labels.

Step 4, the anvaya. ते अधिकारः कर्मणि एव (अस्ति), फलेषु कदाचन मा। (त्वं) कर्मफलहेतुः मा भूः। अकर्मणि ते सङ्गः मा अस्तु।

The meaning. "Your right is in action alone, never in its fruits. Do not be one whose motive is the fruit of action. Let there be no attachment in you to inaction." You have now read the verse, not merely recited it. The full entry is on our page on duty and action.

A note on metre

Count the syllables of the first quarter: क-र्म-ण्ये-वा-धि-का-र-स्ते, eight. Each of the four quarters has eight. In the anushtubh, the fifth syllable of every quarter is short and the sixth is long, and that fixed beat is what gives the verse its familiar swing. A syllable is long (गुरु) if its vowel is long, or if it is followed by two consonants, or by an anusvara or visarga; otherwise it is short (लघु). Some verses of the Gita, such as 2.20 and 2.22, are in a longer metre with eleven syllables in each quarter.

Compounds

Sanskrit joins words into compounds (समास) as freely as it joins sounds. कर्मफलहेतुः above is three words in one: कर्म (action) + फल (fruit) + हेतु (motive). To open a compound, read it from the end: "motive [which is] the fruit of action". Hindi is full of such compounds taken from Sanskrit: राजपुत्र, देशभक्ति, जलप्रपात.

Practise on easy verses first

Begin with verses that have little sandhi and plain words. From our pages, good first choices are Gita 2.23 (नैनं छिन्दन्ति शस्त्राणि), with four short parallel sentences, and Gita 4.8 (परित्राणाय साधूनाम्), whose three fourth-case words are easy to spot. Write out all four steps in a notebook for each verse. After ten verses, the method becomes a habit.