Verse 1

¹Hearing the good doings, honoured in that assembly, of the lord of the Daityas, the foremost of the greatest, whose self was set on the wide-strider, Yudhisthira was filled with gladness and asked the son of the self-born one more. ²Revered one, I want to hear the lasting dharma of men, together with the practice of class and stage, by which a man finds what is highest. ³You are in your own person the son of the lord of creatures, of the one who stands highest; and among his sons, brahmin, you are the one held in regard for austerity, for yoga, for the gathered mind. ⁴Brahmins who are given to Narayana know the secret and highest dharma: those who are full of pity, good and quiet, of your kind; the others do not.

⁵Bowing to the Bhagavan, the unborn, the embankment of dharma for the worlds, I will speak the lasting dharma, as I heard it from the mouth of Narayana. ⁶He came down by a portion of himself, from Dharma, in the daughter of Daksa, and he sits at his austerity in the hermitage of Badari for the good of the worlds. ⁷For the root of dharma is the Bhagavan Hari, king, who is made of all the Vedas; and the remembered word of those who know him; and that by which the self is made glad.