Chanakya Niti — Family and Relationships, Shloka 6
मूर्खाणां पण्डिता द्वेष्या अधनानां महाधनाः ।
परांगना कुलस्त्रीणां सुभगानां च दुर्भगाः ॥
mūrkhāṇāṃ paṇḍitā dveṣyā adhanānāṃ mahādhanāḥ |
parāṅganā kulastrīṇāṃ subhagānāṃ ca durbhagāḥ ||
Die Toren hassen die Gelehrten; die Armen die Reichen; die Frauen des Hauses die Frau eines anderen; und die Unglücklichen die Glücklichen.
FAQs
In the Chanakya Niti/Nītiśāstra tradition, many verses are framed as generalized observations about social rivalry and status competition. Such formulations reflect pre-modern South Asian courtly and household-centered social imaginaries, where learning, wealth, and reputation function as markers that could provoke antagonism across social strata.
The verse presents conflict as arising from asymmetries—knowledge versus ignorance, wealth versus poverty, fortune versus misfortune—and from perceived threats to household or lineage boundaries (signaled by terms like kulastrī and parāṅganā). It characterizes dislike as a recurring social dynamic rather than a legal rule.
The construction uses parallel genitives (mūrkhāṇāṃ… adhanānāṃ… kulastrīṇāṃ… subhagānāṃ) with predicate adjectives (dveṣyāḥ) to create an aphoristic catalogue. Key terms carry culturally specific semantic ranges: paṇḍita denotes learned authority; kulastrī signals an idealized household respectability; parāṅganā is a boundary-marking term for a woman ‘of another,’ functioning as a social category in normative discourse rather than a personal descriptor.