Shloka 2
Governance and Policy — Chanakya Niti
आत्मापराधवृक्षस्य फलान्येतानि देहिनाम् ।
दारिद्र्यदुःखरोगाणि बन्धनव्यसनानि च ॥
ātmāparādha-vṛkṣasya phalāny etāni dehinām |
dāridrya-duḥkha-rogāṇi bandhana-vyasanāni ca ||
Poverty, suffering, and disease—along with bondage and calamity—are the fruits embodied beings reap from the “tree” of their own wrongdoing.
FAQs
In the broader nītiśāstra tradition, verses often frame social adversity (poverty, illness, legal punishment) as consequences of personal misconduct. Such formulations reflect pre-modern South Asian didactic literature that linked ethical behavior with social stability and individual fortune, and they can be read alongside contemporaneous legal-ethical discourses where wrongdoing is associated with both worldly penalties (e.g., bondage) and broader misfortune.
The verse compresses causality into a metaphor: wrongdoing is the generative source (a ‘tree’), while specific hardships are its ‘fruits.’ The formulation is descriptive within the text’s moral logic, presenting adversity as an outcome of self-generated fault rather than as random occurrence or solely external oppression.
The compound ātmāparādha (“self-wrongdoing”) foregrounds agency and responsibility, while vṛkṣa–phala (tree–fruit) is a common Sanskrit metaphor for cause and effect. The coordinated list (poverty–suffering–disease–bondage–calamity) functions as an enumerative rhetorical device, broadening the scope from economic distress to bodily affliction and juridical/social constraint.