Shloka 16
Education and Conduct — Chanakya Niti
विषादप्यमृतं ग्राह्यममेध्यादपि काञ्चनम् ।
अमित्रादपि सद्वृत्तं बालादपि सुभाषितम् ॥
viṣād apy amṛtaṃ grāhyam amedhyād api kāñcanam |
amitrād api sadvṛttaṃ bālād api subhāṣitam ||
The verse describes a traditional maxim that what is beneficial may be accepted even from undesirable sources: nectar even from poison, gold even from impurity, good conduct even from an enemy, and well-spoken words even from a child.
FAQs
Within the Chanakya/Nīti-śāstra tradition, such verses function as aphoristic summaries of pragmatic ethics relevant to courtly and administrative life in early and medieval South Asia, where knowledge, alliances, and counsel could emerge from socially or politically unexpected quarters. The imagery aligns with a broader Sanskrit gnomic style that privileges utility and discernment over the prestige of the source.
The verse frames discernment as an evaluative stance toward content rather than provenance: valuable substances (amṛta, kāñcana) and valuable social goods (sadvṛtta, subhāṣita) are depicted as retainable even when their immediate context is negatively marked (viṣa, amedhya, amitra, bāla). The structure suggests a comparative logic—value is treated as separable from the container or speaker.
The verse uses a four-part parallelism with repeated particles (api, “even”) and ablatives (viṣāt, amedhyāt, amitrāt, bālāt) to foreground contrast between source and value. Metaphors of extraction and separation (nectar from poison; gold from impurity) provide a material analogy for social and rhetorical evaluation (good conduct from an enemy; apt speech from a child), a common technique in classical Sanskrit didactic literature.