Shloka 9
Human Nature — Chanakya Niti
जीवन्तं मृतवन्मन्ये देहिनं धर्मवर्जितम् ।
मृतो धर्मेण संयुक्तो दीर्घजीवी न संशयः ॥
jīvantaṃ mṛtavan manye dehinaṃ dharmavarjitam |
mṛto dharmeṇa saṃyukto dīrghajīvī na saṃśayaḥ ||
One who lives without dharma I regard as dead. But one who dies united with dharma lives long in enduring repute—without doubt.
FAQs
In the broader nītiśāstra milieu, verses of this type reflect an intellectual culture in which social standing, legitimacy, and remembrance were frequently linked to dharma (a multivalent term spanning moral duty, social order, and lawful conduct). Such aphorisms circulated in didactic settings—courts, scholarly instruction, and household pedagogy—where reputation and lineage memory functioned as important social currencies.
Here dharma operates as a criterion of human worth and social remembrance rather than a narrowly legal rule. The contrast implies that dharma is the quality that renders a life socially meaningful and historically memorable; absence of dharma is framed as a kind of social death, while association with dharma enables posthumous endurance through reputation.
The formulation uses antithesis and metaphor: “living” versus “dead,” and “long-lived” applied to someone deceased. The term dīrghajīvī is best read figuratively, indicating lasting fame or continued presence in collective memory. The compound dharmavarjita (“excluded from dharma”) intensifies the evaluative stance by marking dharma as the defining attribute of a ‘living’ person in the text’s ethical idiom.