Śabda No. 5
Your own path.
“Better is one's own duty, even if done poorly, than the duty of another done well.”
Svadharma is your own path. The Gītā says your own duty done imperfectly is better than someone else’s done well.
Arjuna asked his. Samvāda answers yours with the Gītā's own verses.
Samvāda is software, an AI companion tuned to the Bhagavad Gītā. It is not a person. It answers from the verse and shows you which one, and it never pretends to be Kṛṣṇa.
श्रेयान्स्वधर्मो विगुणः परधर्मात्स्वनुष्ठितात्।
स्वधर्मे निधनं श्रेयः परधर्मो भयावहः।।
śreyān swa-dharmo viguṇaḥ para-dharmāt sv-anuṣṭhitāt swa-dharme nidhanaṁ śreyaḥ para-dharmo bhayāvahaḥ
Better is one's own duty, even if done poorly, than the duty of another done well. It is better to die while performing one's own duty; the duty of another is full of fear.
3.35 is verse 154 of 700, and verse 35 of 43 in chapter 3.
Svadharma (one's own duty), in any form, appears in 4 verses of the 700: 2.31, 2.33, 3.35 and 18.47.
3.35 falls under the speaker label of Kṛṣṇa.
Counted by Vāṇi on the 700-verse text at getvani.app/gita.
3.35 is a verse about not borrowing someone else's life. Your own duty, even done poorly, is better than another's done well. It is better to die in one's own duty, the verse adds, because another's duty is full of fear. The verse before, 3.34, warns that the senses have fixed likes and dislikes for their objects and that one should not fall under their sway, since they are enemies. Right after, in 3.36, Arjuna asks what pushes a person to do wrong even against their will. The story reads svadharma as your own path. In the Gītā the verse sits between a warning about the pull of the senses and a question about what drives people against their own will. See chapter 3 and what the Gītā says about dharma.