Shloka 5
Human Nature — Chanakya Niti
अहो बत विचित्राणि चरितानि महात्मनाम् ।
लक्ष्मीं तृणाय मन्यन्ते तद्भारेण नमन्ति च ॥
aho bata vicitrāṇi caritāni mahātmanām |
lakṣmīṃ tṛṇāya manyante tad-bhāreṇa namanti ca ||
Ah, how strange are the ways of the great-souled: they deem Lakṣmī—wealth and fortune—as mere grass, yet they still bend beneath the weight that comes with it.
FAQs
Within the nīti-śāstra (ethico-political aphoristic) tradition, such verses commonly juxtapose renunciatory ideals with the practical burdens of power and prosperity. The formulation reflects a milieu in which elite householders, administrators, and courtly figures were imagined as negotiating both material resources (lakṣmī) and the social obligations that accompany them.
Lakṣmī is presented as simultaneously negligible in intrinsic value (“as grass”) and consequential in its effects (“its weight” causing one to bend). The verse treats wealth less as an object of desire and more as a socially operative force that generates responsibility, pressure, or constraint.
The verse uses a deliberate paradox: tṛṇāya (“like grass”) conveys rhetorical minimization, while bhāra (“weight”) frames wealth as a load that imposes strain. The exclamatory pairing aho bata marks astonishment at the “vicitra” (counterintuitive) nature of mahātman conduct, a common stylistic device in Sanskrit gnomic literature.