Shloka 20
Governance and Policy — Chanakya Niti
त्यज दुर्जनसंसर्गं भज साधुसमागमम् ।
कुरु पुण्यमहोरात्रं स्मर नित्यमनित्यतः ॥
tyaja durjanasaṃsargaṃ bhaja sādhusamāgamam |
kuru puṇyam ahorātraṃ smara nityam anityataḥ ||
Abandon the company of the wicked; seek the company of the virtuous. Do meritorious deeds day and night, and always remember the world’s impermanence.
FAQs
Within the Chanakya-niti tradition, such verses are commonly situated in a milieu of courtly and civic life where personal association (saṃsarga/samāgama) was treated as a decisive factor in reputation, security, and access to patronage. The emphasis on avoiding the durjana and seeking the sādhu reflects a broader South Asian aphoristic genre that links ethical character to social networks, relevant to both household and political environments in premodern India.
Moral discipline is framed through four linked practices: distancing from socially or ethically destabilizing company (durjanasaṃsarga), cultivating proximity to exemplary persons (sādhusamāgama), sustaining puṇya as a continuous activity (ahorātra), and maintaining reflective awareness of anitya (impermanence). The verse presents these as interdependent components of a traditional regimen of conduct rather than as a single doctrinal definition.
The verse uses paired imperatives in balanced cola (tyaja/bhaja; kuru/smara), a common didactic style in niti literature that creates mnemonic symmetry. The compound durjanasaṃsargaṃ and sādhusamāgamam encode social evaluation through association-terms rather than abstract theory. The final phrase anityataḥ (“from the standpoint of impermanence”) introduces a reflective register often associated with broader Indian philosophical discourse, functioning here as a lens through which worldly aims and actions are to be interpreted.