Verse 15.14

अहं वैश्वानरो भूत्वा प्राणिनां देहमाश्रितः ।

प्राणापानसमायुक्तः पचाम्यन्नं चतुर्विधम् ॥

15.14

Transliteration

ahaṃ vaiśvānaro bhūtvā prāṇināṃ dehamāśritaḥ |

prāṇāpānasamāyuktaḥ pacāmyannaṃ caturvidham ||

By Sanskrit System · Machine draft · @indic-transliteration/sanscript 1.3.3

Translation

Having become the fire Vaisvanara, I abide in the body of living beings and, associated with the Prana and the Apana, digest the fourfold food.

From the owner's sheet · +1 more

Word by word

I
the digestive fire
becoming
of living beings
body
dwelling in

joined with prana and apana
digest
food
of four kinds

By Sanskrit System · Machine draft · claude-opus-5-5 · 2026-11-08

Explanation

Krishna now moves inside the body. As Vaishvanara, the fire of digestion, he dwells in all living creatures, and working with the breaths called prāṇa and apāna he digests the four kinds of food, traditionally things chewed, swallowed, licked and sucked. The verse brings the divine into the most ordinary bodily process. Many readers take it as a reason to treat eating as a sacred act, an offering to the fire within, rather than mere consumption.