Shloka 12
Education and Conduct — Chanakya Niti
आतुरे व्यसने प्राप्ते दुर्भिक्षे शत्रुसङ्कटे ।
राजद्वारे श्मशाने च यस्तिष्ठति स बान्धवः ॥
āture vyasane prāpte durbhikṣe śatrusaṅkaṭe |
rājadvāre śmaśāne ca yastiṣṭhati sa bāndhavaḥ ||
He who stays by you in illness, when calamity strikes, in famine, amid enemy danger, at the king’s gate (court), and at the cremation ground—he is a true kinsman.
FAQs
The verse reflects a milieu in which social reliability was tested in high-risk settings: illness and famine (household and community vulnerability), enemy threat (inter-polity conflict), the king’s gate (interfaces with royal administration, petitions, or litigation), and the cremation ground (ritual and familial duty). Such loci are common in nīti literature as markers of practical solidarity within kin and patronage networks.
Kinship (bāndhava) is framed less as a purely genealogical status and more as demonstrated presence and support under adversity. The verse presents an evidentiary model of relationship, where sustained attendance in crises functions as the distinguishing sign of a “true” relation.
Key terms are situational and institutional: rājadvāra evokes the royal threshold as a metonym for state power, bureaucracy, and legal exposure; śmaśāna signals the socially and ritually charged boundary of death. The repeated locatives (āture, durbhikṣe, śatrusaṅkaṭe, etc.) create a catalog of stress-tests, using place and circumstance as a philological strategy to define ethical reliability through context rather than abstract doctrine.