Shloka 11
Discernment and Wisdom — Chanakya Niti
आप्तद्वेषाद्भवेन्मृत्युः परद्वेषाद्धनक्षयः ।
राजद्वेषाद्भवेन्नाशो ब्रह्मद्वेषात्कुलक्षयः ॥
āptadveṣād bhaven mṛtyuḥ parādveṣād dhanakṣayaḥ |
rājadveṣād bhaven nāśo brahmadveṣāt kulakṣayaḥ ||
Hostility toward trusted allies brings death; hostility toward others brings loss of wealth; hostility toward the king brings ruin; hostility toward Brahmins brings the decline of one’s lineage.
FAQs
In the nītiśāstra tradition, social and political stability is framed through relationships with key nodes of power and legitimacy: allies and patrons (āpta), rulers (rāja), and Brahminical religious/intellectual institutions (brahman). The verse reflects a milieu in which royal punishment or exclusion could entail material ruin, while conflict with priestly elites could be narrated as threatening ritual status and intergenerational continuity (kula).
Here āpta functions as a category of reliable associate—often read in nīti literature as benefactors, confidants, kin, or proven allies. The verse treats enmity toward such figures as especially perilous, presenting it as a proximate cause of severe outcomes within the text’s moral-political worldview.
The stanza is built on a parallel syntactic chain using ablatives (-dveṣāt, “from hostility toward…”) paired with outcomes (mṛtyuḥ, dhanakṣayaḥ, nāśaḥ, kulakṣayaḥ). This rhetorical stacking creates a graded map of dangers tied to different social relations, and the term kṣaya (“decay/ruin”) links economic loss (dhanakṣaya) with genealogical decline (kulakṣaya) through shared vocabulary.