Shloka 5
Right Conduct — Chanakya Niti
गृहासक्तस्य नो विद्या नो दया मांसभोजिनः ।
द्रव्यलुब्धस्य नो सत्यं स्त्रैणस्य न पवित्रता ॥
gṛhāsaktasya no vidyā no dayā māṁsabhojinaḥ |
dravyalubdhasya no satyaṁ straiṇasya na pavitratā ||
One attached to household life has no learning; one who eats meat has no compassion; one greedy for wealth has no truth; one enslaved by women has no purity.
FAQs
In the nīti-śāstra tradition, compact maxims classify behaviors seen as obstacles to key virtues valued in elite ethical and political discourse. This verse reflects a milieu where ascetic and courtly moral vocabularies often evaluated social roles (such as household attachment) and appetites (food, wealth, sexuality) through the lens of self-control, credibility, and moral reputation.
The verse treats dayā (compassion), satya (truthfulness), and pavitratā (purity) as social-ethical qualities inferred from habitual conduct. Compassion is framed as incompatible with meat-eating in this aphoristic schema; truthfulness is framed as undermined by intense greed for wealth; and purity is framed as compromised by straiṇatva, a term used for uncontrolled sexual pursuit or excessive woman-centered desire.
The construction uses repeated negation (no… na…) to form a four-part moral typology, a common didactic style in Sanskrit gnomic literature. Key terms are adjectival genitives (e.g., gṛhāsaktasya, dravyalubdhasya) functioning as 'in the case of X' categories. The lexeme straiṇa is culturally loaded: philologically it denotes a person 'given to women,' and in nīti contexts it often signals lack of restraint rather than a neutral description of relationships.