[ SANSKRIT TERM ]
श्लोक· shloka
A verse. The basic unit of the Gita.
MEANING
A shloka is a Sanskrit verse — specifically, a 32-syllable couplet in the anushtubh meter, the most common verse form in Indian classical poetry. The Bhagavad Gita is 700 shlokas (701 in some recensions). Each shloka is designed to be memorised, chanted, and unpacked over years. The compression matters: a single shloka can hold a teaching that takes pages of English commentary to render. Reading the Gita is partly reading the shlokas, partly listening to them in their meter, partly sitting with the gap between what they say and what they mean.