Shloka 19
Governance and Policy — Chanakya Niti
धर्मं धनं च धान्यं च गुरोर्वचनमौषधम् ।
सुगृहीतं च कर्तव्यमन्यथा तु न जीवति ॥
dharmaṁ dhanaṁ ca dhānyaṁ ca guror vacanam auṣadham |
sugṛhītaṁ ca kartavyam anyathā tu na jīvati ||
Dharma, wealth, provisions, and a teacher’s instruction as “medicine” must be carefully kept and rightly taken up; otherwise one cannot survive.
FAQs
In the Nīti-śāstra milieu, such verses commonly compress practical concerns of household and polity—ethical order (dharma), material resources (dhana), staple subsistence (dhānya), and pedagogy (guru-vacana)—into memorably parallel items. The formulation reflects an environment where survival and stability were understood as dependent on both moral-social norms and concrete economic provisioning, alongside deference to learned instruction.
The verse characterizes the teacher’s words as auṣadha (“medicine”), framing instruction as a remedial or sustaining agent. The emphasis falls on “proper taking/holding” (sugṛhītam), implying that instruction functions effectively only when internalized and applied in an appropriate manner, analogous to correct use of a remedy.
The compound-like pairing “guror vacanam auṣadham” employs a common Sanskrit didactic metaphor: knowledge or counsel as a therapeutic substance. The parallel listing (dharma–dhana–dhānya–guru-vacana) uses sound and semantic balance to link ethical legitimacy, economic capacity, food security, and pedagogical authority as mutually reinforcing conditions of continued life (jīvati).