Shloka 17
Right Conduct — Chanakya Niti
देवद्रव्यं गुरुद्रव्यं परदाराभिमर्शनम् ।
निर्वाहः सर्वभूतेषु विप्रश्चाण्डाल उच्यते ॥
devadravyaṃ gurudravyaṃ paradārābhimarśanam |
nirvāhaḥ sarvabhūteṣu vipraś cāṇḍāla ucyate ||
One who makes a living by misusing temple wealth, a teacher’s property, or by violating another man’s wife—though a Brahmin—is spoken of as a “cāṇḍāla”.
FAQs
The verse reflects a premodern normative discourse in which certain forms of misappropriation and sexual transgression are treated as severe violations of social order. References to devadravya and gurudravya point to protected spheres of wealth associated with religious institutions and teacher–disciple lineages, while the contrast between “vipra” and “cāṇḍāla” uses a classical hierarchy to express moral and social degradation as understood in that tradition.
Social degradation is expressed through a rhetorical reclassification: a “vipra” (a high-status learned figure) is described as being spoken of as a “cāṇḍāla” when associated with specific transgressive livelihoods. The formulation functions as a moral taxonomy within the text’s value system rather than as an empirical sociological description.
The compound “paradārābhimarśanam” compresses a category of sexual violation into a single term, typical of aphoristic nīti style. The phrase “vipraś cāṇḍāla ucyate” employs a stark juxtaposition of social labels as a moral metaphor: it frames certain acts as causing a symbolic fall from ritual-intellectual prestige to a heavily stigmatized status within the period’s social lexicon.