Shloka 8
Education and Conduct — Chanakya Niti
यस्मिन्देशे न सम्मानो न वृत्तिर्न च बान्धवाः ।
न च विद्यागमोऽप्यस्ति वासं तत्र न कारयेत् ॥
yasmin deśe na sammāno na vṛttir na ca bāndhavāḥ |
na ca vidyāgamo 'py asti vāsaṃ tatra na kārayet ||
In a land with no honor, no livelihood, no relatives, and no access to learning, one should not make one’s home.
FAQs
Within the broader nīti (didactic) tradition, the verse reflects assumptions common to early South Asian social and political life: personal security and advancement were often linked to patronage, reputation (sammāna), kin networks (bāndhava), stable economic support (vṛtti), and proximity to centers of learning (vidyā). Such aphorisms function as compact observations about conditions thought necessary for sustaining status and opportunity in a region.
The verse juxtaposes vṛtti (a term spanning occupation, subsistence, and ongoing means of support) with vidyāgama (literally the ‘coming/availability of learning’), treating both as infrastructural conditions of a place. In this framing, a region’s suitability is evaluated through material support (vṛtti) and intellectual access (vidyāgama), alongside social recognition and kinship ties.
The construction uses a cumulative negation (na… na… na… na…) to create an exhaustive checklist of absences, a common aphoristic style in Sanskrit didactic literature. The term deśa is flexible—ranging from ‘country’ to ‘locale’—and vidyāgama is notable for implying not merely ‘knowledge’ but the presence of institutions or persons through which learning becomes obtainable. The optative kārayet (from √kṛ, ‘to do/make’) expresses a conventional normative register of counsel in nīti texts, here framed as a historical prescription rather than a universal rule.