पुरुषम् सोम्य उत हस्तगृहीतम् आनयन्ति अपहार्षीत् स्तेयम् अकार्षीत् परशुम् अस्मै तपत इति सः यदि तस्य कर्ता भवति ततः एव अनृतम् आत्मानम् कुरुते सः अनृताभिसन्धः अनृतेन आत्मानम् अन्तर्धाय परशुम् तप्तम् प्रतिगृह्णाति सः दह्यते अथ हन्यते
puruṣam somya uta hastagṛhītam ānayanti apahārṣīt steyam akārṣīt paraśum asmai tapata iti saḥ yadi tasya kartā bhavati tataḥ eva anṛtam ātmānam kurute saḥ anṛtābhisandhaḥ anṛtena ātmānam antardhāya paraśum taptam pratigṛhṇāti saḥ dahyate atha hanyate
"They bring a man, my dear, seized by the hand: 'He has taken it! He has committed a theft! Heat the axe for him!' If he has done it, he makes himself false; wrapping himself in falsehood, he takes hold of the heated axe — he is burnt, and he is put to death.
4d40caf993f1 · प्रकाशित 26 जुल॰ 2026, 11:42:00 pm UTC
उपलब्ध भाषाएँRUENश्लोक बदलें इन कुंजियों से
The last parable is taken from the courtroom: the ordeal by red-hot axe, an ancient trial by truth. The accused grasps the iron, and the court reads the burn. What interests the Upaniṣad is the mechanism: a guilty man who denies his guilt "makes himself false" (anṛtam ātmānaṁ kurute) — by himself, by his own word; the falsehood he has "wrapped himself in" (antardhāya, "screened himself with") does not screen him from the fire, and he burns twice over — by the burn and by the execution.
Here is the chapter's final depth: truth and being are one (both are called satya, from sat, "being"); falsehood is a gap in being, a self-made void. A liar suffers not because the axe is malicious but because he has taken his stand on what does not exist: the fire merely shows what is and what is not. So the whole sad-vidyā turns into an ethic: for one who has come to know Being, to lie is to cut himself off from his own root.