Chanakya Niti — Family and Relationships, Shloka 21
नराणां नापितो धूर्तः पक्षिणां चैव वायसः ।
चतुष्पादं शृगालस्तु स्त्रीणां धूर्ता च मालिनी ॥
narāṇāṃ nāpito dhūrtaḥ pakṣiṇāṃ caiva vāyasaḥ |
catuṣpādaṃ śṛgālas tu strīṇāṃ dhūrtā ca mālinī ||
Unter den Menschen gilt der Barbier als listig, unter den Vögeln die Krähe, unter den Vierfüßern der Schakal, unter den Frauen die Kranzbinderin.
FAQs
In the Nītiśāstra tradition, verses often catalogue socially recognized ‘types’ (e.g., professions, animals, and social categories) to express cautionary observations. This shloka reflects a premodern South Asian milieu in which occupational roles (such as barbers) and familiar animals (crows, jackals) carried conventional moral-symbolic associations, and it records those associations as part of a didactic anthology.
The verse does not define dhūrta through a formal description of behaviors; instead, it identifies representative exemplars across categories (human profession, birds, quadrupeds, and a female occupational label). The term dhūrta here functions as a classificatory moral descriptor within a proverb-like list rather than a technical philosophical definition.
The construction is a parallel, enumerative schema—‘among X, Y is dhūrta’—which is common in gnomic Sanskrit. The animals named (vāyasa, śṛgāla) are widely used in Indic literature as figures for opportunism or cunning, while nāpita and mālinī reflect profession-based stereotyping found in some premodern texts; philologically, the verse relies on genitive plurals (narāṇām, pakṣiṇām, strīṇām) to frame each category.
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