Shloka 17
Dharma and Wealth — Chanakya Niti
विद्या मित्रं प्रवासे च भार्या मित्रं गृहेषु च ।
व्याधितस्यौषधं मित्रं धर्मो मित्रं मृतस्य च ॥
vidyā mitraṃ pravāse ca bhāryā mitraṃ gṛheṣu ca |
vyādhitasya auṣadhaṃ mitraṃ dharmo mitraṃ mṛtasya ca ||
On a journey, learning is a friend; at home, a wife is a friend; for the sick, medicine is a friend; for the dead, dharma is a friend.
FAQs
In the broader Nīti-śāstra milieu, aphoristic verses often classify supports or forms of security by situation (travel, household life, illness, death). This reflects a premodern social world in which mobility, domestic organization, health, and post-mortem merit were treated as distinct domains requiring different forms of reliable “companionship” or resources.
The verse uses “mitra” in an extended sense, applying it to both persons (wife) and impersonal supports (learning, medicine, dharma). In this usage, “friend” functions as a category for what is dependable or sustaining within a given life-condition rather than only a social relationship.
The repeated predicate “mitraṃ” creates a catalog-like parallelism, a common didactic device in Sanskrit gnomic poetry. The metaphorical extension of “mitra” to abstractions (vidyā, dharma) and practical means (auṣadha) illustrates a semantic range where companionship overlaps with protection, utility, and continuity—culminating in dharma as what is framed as enduring beyond death within the text’s cultural-religious horizon.