Shloka 17
Governance and Policy — Chanakya Niti
सुसिद्धमौषधं धर्मं गृहच्छिद्रं च मैथुनम् ।
कुभुक्तं कुश्रुतं चैव मतिमान्न प्रकाशयेत् ॥
susiddham auṣadhaṁ dharmaṁ gṛhacchidraṁ ca maithunam |
kubhuktaṁ kuśrutaṁ caiva matimān na prakāśayet ||
A prudent person should not disclose: a well-proven remedy, one’s own dharma-practice, weaknesses within the household, sexual relations, improper eating, and what has been poorly heard or learned.
FAQs
Within the broader Nīti-Śāstra milieu, such verses are commonly framed as observations about discretion and reputation-management in household and public life. The listed items reflect domains treated as sensitive in pre-modern South Asian normative literature: health practices, personal religiosity (dharma), domestic security, sexuality, and conduct that could invite social criticism.
In this verse, “dharma” functions as a broad category for one’s religious-ethical commitments and customary observances. The phrasing treats it as a personal matter whose public display could be socially or strategically disadvantageous, reflecting a historical tension between inner practice and outward performance in didactic literature.
The compound “gṛhacchidra” (household + fissure/flaw) uses a concrete image of a structural ‘crack’ to denote vulnerability, aligning domestic space with security concerns. The paired negatives “kubhukta” and “kuśruta” employ the prefix “ku-” (badly/poorly) to group together forms of compromised conduct or deficient acquisition of knowledge, suggesting a catalog of matters considered unfit for public narration in the text’s social register.