Shloka 10
Dharma and Wealth — Chanakya Niti
न विप्रपादोदककर्दमाणि
न वेदशास्त्रध्वनिगर्जितानि ।
स्वाहास्वधाकारविवर्जितानि
श्मशानतुल्यानि गृहाणि तानि ॥
na viprapādodakakardamāṇi
na vedaśāstradhvanigarjitāni |
svāhāsvadhākāravivarjitāni
śmaśānatulyāni gṛhāṇi tāni ||
Houses where there is no ritual water from a brāhmaṇa’s feet, no resounding recitation of Veda and śāstra, and no utterance of “svāhā” and “svadhā”—such houses are like a cremation-ground.
FAQs
The verse reflects a classical South Asian ideal in which household legitimacy and social prestige were associated with brahmanical presence, textual recitation (Veda/śāstra), and routine ritual acts. Such formulations are commonly read by historians as evidence for how domestic space was conceptually tied to learned and sacrificial-ancestral practices in premodern normative literature.
Absence is framed through three markers: lack of contact with a brāhmaṇa (signaled by pādodaka), lack of audible learning (Vedic and śāstric recitation), and lack of ritual utterances linked to offerings for deities and ancestors (svāhā/svadhā). The verse uses these as indicators of a house being symbolically ‘empty’ of sanctioned cultural-religious activity.
The metaphor equating such houses with a śmaśāna (cremation-ground) employs a strong purity/inauspiciousness contrast typical of dharma and nīti literature. Compounds like vedaśāstradhvanigarjitāni intensify the auditory imagery (“resounding” learning), while svāhāsvadhākāra foregrounds formulaic ritual speech as a defining feature of an ‘alive’ household in the text’s idiom.