Shloka 7
Education and Conduct — Chanakya Niti
आपदर्थे धनं रक्षेच्छ्रीमतां कुत आपदः ।
कदाचिच्चलते लक्ष्मीः सञ्चितोऽपि विनश्यति ॥
āpadarthe dhanaṃ rakṣec chrīmatāṃ kuta āpadaḥ |
kadācic calate lakṣmīḥ sañcito'pi vinaśyati ||
Guard wealth for times of calamity; even the prosperous are not free from misfortune. Fortune (Lakṣmī) sometimes wavers, and even what is amassed can perish.
FAQs
In the nīti (conduct/statecraft) literature of early and medieval South Asia, aphorisms commonly reflect courtly and mercantile concerns such as risk, uncertainty, and the fragility of prosperity. This verse aligns with a broader historical discourse in which wealth is treated as contingent and subject to reversal through political upheaval, disaster, or shifts in patronage and power.
Wealth (dhana) is presented as something accumulated and guarded, while misfortune (āpada) is treated as an ever-possible condition rather than an exception reserved for the poor. The rhetorical line about the prosperous—“from where would calamity come?”—functions as a voiced assumption that the second half of the verse then complicates by emphasizing instability.
The verse uses Lakṣmī as a conventional personification of prosperity, a common feature of Sanskrit moral and political aphorisms. The verb calate (“moves,” “wavers”) frames fortune as inherently mobile and unreliable, and the contrast between sañcita (“accumulated”) and vinaśyati (“perishes”) underscores the theme of impermanence through compact, antithetical diction.