Shloka 1
Dharma and Wealth — Chanakya Niti
सानन्दं सदनं सुतास्तु सुधियः कान्ता प्रियालापिनी
इच्छापूर्तिधनं स्वयोषिति रतिः स्वाज्ञापराः सेवकाः ।
आतिथ्यं शिवपूजनं प्रतिदिनं मिष्टान्नपानं गृहे
साधोः संगमुपासते च सततं धन्यो गृहस्थाश्रमः ॥
sānandaṃ sadanaṃ sutāstu sudhiyaḥ kāntā priyālāpinī
icchāpūrtidhanaṃ svayoṣiti ratiḥ svājñāparāḥ sevakāḥ |
ātithyaṃ śivapūjanaṃ pratidinaṃ miṣṭānnapānaṃ gṛhe
sādhoḥ saṅgamupāsate ca satataṃ dhanyo gṛhasthāśramaḥ ||
Fortunate is the householder’s stage: a joyful home, wise children, a spouse who speaks lovingly; wealth that fulfills wishes, intimacy with one’s own wife, obedient servants; hospitality, daily worship of Śiva, sweet food and drink at home, and constant company of the virtuous (sādhu).
FAQs
The verse reflects a classical Sanskrit didactic framing of the āśrama system, especially the gṛhastha (householder) as a socially productive life-stage. Its listed markers—household prosperity, dependents (children and servants), hospitality, routine worship, and association with a sādhu—correspond to ideals visible across Dharmaśāstra and nīti literature, where domestic order and ritual-social obligations are treated as stabilizing features of elite household life in premodern South Asia.
Domestic ‘fortune’ (dhanya) is presented as a composite of material sufficiency (wealth enabling desire-fulfillment and food provisioning), harmonious family relations (affectionate spouse, capable children), household hierarchy (obedient servants), public-facing social duty (hospitality), religious routine (daily Śiva worship), and moral-spiritual association (regular company of a sādhu). The definition is descriptive of an idealized household ecology rather than a single economic measure.
The verse uses a catalog (enumerative) style typical of nīti poetry, compressing an ideal social world into parallel noun-phrases. Notably, compounds such as icchāpūrtidhana (‘wealth that fulfills wishes’) and miṣṭānnapāna (‘sweet food-and-drink’) function as shorthand for prosperity and refined domestic consumption, while gṛhasthāśrama anchors the list within the four-āśrama framework. The term sādhu operates as a moral index, implying that social prosperity is rhetorically completed by proximity to recognized virtue.