Shloka 14
Right Conduct — Chanakya Niti
लाक्षादितैलनीलीनां कौसुम्भमधुसर्पिषाम् ।
विक्रेता मद्यमांसानां स विप्रः शूद्र उच्यते ॥
lākṣāditailanīlīnāṃ kausumbhamadhusarpiṣām |
vikretā madyamāṃsānāṃ sa vipraḥ śūdra ucyate ||
A vipra who trades in lac, oils, indigo/dyes, safflower dye, honey, ghee—and also sells liquor and meat—is in this text called a “śūdra”.
FAQs
The verse reflects a premodern South Asian moral discourse in which social categories (such as brāhmaṇa and śūdra) were often linked to ritual status and to ideals about appropriate occupations. In this tradition, certain forms of commerce—especially in intoxicants and meat—could be represented as incompatible with the normative duties associated with priestly/learned status.
In this formulation, the text uses occupation (specifically, selling particular commodities) as a criterion for re-describing a person’s social classification. The statement functions as a moral taxonomy: it characterizes a vipra who sells these goods as being 'called' a śūdra within the text’s ethical framework.
The verse employs a list (enumeration) of trade goods to mark boundaries between idealized social roles. The key linguistic pivot is the predicate 'śūdra ucyate' (“is said to be called a śūdra”), which signals a classificatory judgment rather than a narrative event; the genitive plural compounds (e.g., lākṣāditailanīlīnāṃ) compress multiple commodities into a single occupational descriptor, a common stylistic feature in Sanskrit gnomic literature.