Shloka 16
Dharma and Wealth — Chanakya Niti
काष्ठं कल्पतरुः सुमेरुचलश्चिन्तामणिः प्रस्तरः
सूर्यास्तीव्रकरः शशी क्षयकरः क्षारो हि वारां निधिः ।
कामो नष्टतनुर्वलिर्दितिसुतो नित्यं पशुः कामगौ-
र्नैतांस्ते तुलयामि भो रघुपते कस्योपमा दीयते ॥
kāṣṭhaṃ kalpataruḥ sumerucalaś cintāmaṇiḥ prastaraḥ
sūryās tīvrakaraḥ śaśī kṣayakaraḥ kṣāro hi vārāṃ nidhiḥ |
kāmo naṣṭatanur balir ditisuto nityaṃ paśuḥ kāmagau-
arnaitāṃs te tulayāmi bho raghupate kasyopamā dīyate ||
The wishing-tree is but wood, Sumeru but a hill, the cintāmaṇi but a stone; the sun is harsh-rayed, the moon brings waning, the ocean is only salt. Kāma is bodiless, Bali an asura, and the wish-cow ever an animal—O Raghupati, I cannot measure you by these; what simile could be given?
FAQs
The verse reflects a Sanskrit rhetorical habit of cataloguing culturally familiar ‘great exemplars’ (kalpataru, Sumeru, cintāmaṇi, sun, moon, ocean, mythic figures) and then overturning their expected qualities. Such lists draw on Itihāsa–Purāṇa and kāvya conventions, indicating a milieu where shared mythological and cosmological references functioned as common scholarly currency.
Upamā (simile) is treated as potentially inadequate when the subject is presented as exceeding ordinary standards of description. The verse frames comparison as a measure that can fail: even renowned comparanda are rhetorically reduced to lesser states, implying that the addressee (“Raghupati”) resists stable equivalence within conventional exemplars.
The passage uses paradox and negation-by-reversal: each celebrated noun is paired with a deflating predicate (e.g., kalpataru → kāṣṭha, cintāmaṇi → prastara). The final interrogative (“kasyopamā dīyate”) functions as a closure typical of hyperbolic praise (atiśayokti), while the vocative “raghupate” and the mythic catalogue signal intertextual borrowing from devotional and epic registers rather than technical statecraft diction.