Shloka 4
Discernment and Wisdom — Chanakya Niti
कवयः किं न पश्यन्ति किं न भक्षन्ति वायसाः ।
मद्यपाः किं न जल्पन्ति किं न कुर्वन्ति योषितः ॥
kavayaḥ kiṃ na paśyanti kiṃ na bhakṣanti vāyasāḥ |
madyapāḥ kiṃ na jalpanti kiṃ na kurvanti yoṣitaḥ ||
What do poets not see? What do crows not eat? What do drunkards not babble? What do women not do?
FAQs
In the Chanakya Niti tradition, such verses often function as compact aphorisms using rhetorical questions to summarize perceived social types. Historically, this reflects a genre of didactic literature (nīti) that circulated in learned milieus and employed generalized characterizations to illustrate cautionary themes rather than document empirical sociology.
The verse frames “lack of limits” through four archetypes: poets are depicted as having unrestricted perception, crows as indiscriminate in consumption, drinkers as unrestrained in speech, and women as unbounded in action. This construction operates as a literary device that maps different domains (seeing, eating, speaking, doing) onto stereotyped figures.
The repeated pattern “kiṃ na …” (“what is it that [they] do not …?”) is a Sanskrit rhetorical formula implying universality or extremity. The verse also uses parallelism across verbs (paśyanti/bhakṣanti/jalpanti/kurvanti) to create a mnemonic, epigrammatic effect typical of nīti literature, while “yoṣit” functions as a gendered social category within the period’s literary conventions.