Shloka 16
Human Nature — Chanakya Niti
अनवस्थितकार्यस्य न जने न वने सुखम् ।
जनो दहति संसर्गाद्वनं संगविवर्जनात् ॥
anavasthita-kāryasya na jane na vane sukham |
jano dahati saṃsargād vanaṃ saṅga-vivarjanāt ||
For one whose undertakings are unsettled, there is no happiness either among people or in the forest. Society burns by association; the forest burns by lack of association.
FAQs
In the broader nīti-śāstra tradition, such verses are commonly situated in a milieu where household life, courtly society, and forest-withdrawal (vānaprastha/renunciant imaginaries) are contrasted as social spaces with different pressures. The formulation reflects a classical concern with mental steadiness and the management of social ties, themes also visible across Sanskrit ethical anthologies and statecraft-oriented literature.
The expression anavasthita-kārya frames the subject as someone whose projects or duties lack settledness (avasthā). The verse presents this instability as a condition that prevents sukha regardless of setting, implying that the problem is attributed to the agent’s internal disposition and follow-through rather than to any single external environment.
The verb dahati (“burns/afflicts”) operates metaphorically for distress: in society the ‘burning’ is linked to saṃsarga (contact, entangling association), while in the forest it is linked to saṅga-vivarjana (privation of association). The paired antithesis creates a rhetorical balance: opposite environments are portrayed as producing suffering by opposite mechanisms, highlighting a classical Sanskrit motif that both attachment and isolation can be sources of duḥkha when the agent is unsettled.