Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 10.64.34
Blended reading (Sanskrit + English inline)
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hinasti viṣam attāram
—
poison destroys the one who ingests it
Hinasti (kills, from √hiṁs) + viṣa + attṛ (eater, from √ad). Poison's scope is limited — the eater alone. Kṛṣṇa establishes the baseline before showing brāhmaṇa-sva's greater scope.
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vahniḥ adbhiḥ praśāmyati
—
fire is extinguished by water
Vahni (fire) + ap (water) + pra-√śam (to be pacified). The second baseline: fire has a remedy. Brāhmaṇa-property combines the worst of both — poison's no-antidote and fire's spreading reach.
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kulam sa - mūlam
—
the family down to the root
Kula (family, lineage) + sa-mūla (with the root). The phrase 'down to the root' is the Bhāgavata's idiom for total extinction. The next verse will quantify it — three / ten / ten generations.
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brahma - sva - araṇi - pāvakaḥ
—
the fire produced from the kindling-stick of a brāhmaṇa's property
Brahma-sva (brāhmaṇa-property) + araṇi (the wooden fire-drill used in Vedic ritual) + pāvaka (fire). The metaphor is Vedic-ritual: as araṇi is rubbed to produce sacrificial fire, so brāhmaṇa-property, mishandled, generates the fire that destroys lineages. The image makes the punishment śāstric, not arbitrary.
Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī compares the fire ignited by stealing a brāhmaṇa’s property to the fire that blazes within the cavity of an old tree. Such a fire cannot be put out even with the water of numerous rainfalls. Rather, it burns the whole tree from within, all the way down to the roots in the ground. Similarly, the fire ignited by stealing a brāhmaṇa’s property is the most deadly and should be avoided at all costs.
"Even taking poison is preferable to taking a brahmana's property. Poison destroys the drinker." "Can it be compared to fire, which inflicts death on those who contact it?" " Fire leaves the roots intact. The fire which burns the brahmana's property is a special type of fire, difficult to control. Just as a fire burning in an old tree increases and cannot be extinguished by rainfall for many years, this fire burns the tree even to the root under the earth---that is, it destroys the family at its root."
Poison kills only the drinker of it, not his relatives. Fire is extinguished completely (pra—śamyati) with water. The brāhmaṇa’s property is like a forest fire. All remedies do not lessen the effect at all. That fire destroys sons and grandsons as well as fathers and grandfathers (sa-mūlam).
- What act of mine could quietly affect my whole family's spiritual fortunes?
- How does responsibility expand when I see myself as a doorway through which consequences reach my dependents?
An ordinary poison kills one body; an ordinary fire is put out with one bucket of water. But brāhmaṇa-property burns dynasties — the kindling is the property itself, and the flame eats backward through generations. The arithmetic is generational, not personal.
My note
Source: vedabase.io