Shloka 16
Practical Maxims — Chanakya Niti
पीतः क्रुद्धेन तातश्चरणतलहतो वल्लभो येन रोषा
दाबाल्याद्विप्रवर्यैः स्ववदनविवरे धार्यते वैरिणी मे ।
गेहं मे छेदयन्ति प्रतिदिवसमुमाकान्तपूजानिमित्तं
तस्मात्खिन्ना सदाहं द्विजकुलनिलयं नाथ युक्तं त्यजामि ॥
pītaḥ kruddhena tātaś caraṇatalahato vallabho yena roṣā
ḍābālyād dvipravairyaiḥ svavadana-vivare dhāryate vairiṇī me |
gehaṃ me chedayanti pratidivasam umākānta-pūjā-nimittaṃ
tasmāt khinnā sadāhaṃ dvijakula-nilayaṃ nātha yuktaṃ tyajāmi ||
I was made to drink; then my beloved, in anger, struck my father with the sole of his foot. My rival has been kept from childhood by eminent Brahmins, as if held “within the mouth’s opening.” My household is cut down day by day for the worship of Umākānta (Śiva). Therefore I am ever distressed; my lord, it is fitting that I abandon this dwelling tied to a Brahmin household.
FAQs
The verse is framed as a domestic complaint embedded in a didactic anthology. Its imagery reflects social assumptions found in premodern Sanskrit literature: household authority structures, the cultural prestige of Brahmin lineages, and the perceived economic burden of continual ritual worship. Such passages are often studied as evidence for the rhetoric of household ethics and social hierarchy rather than as documentary reportage.
Religious worship is described as a recurring cause (nimitta) for the household being ‘cut down’ or diminished (chedayanti), suggesting a trope in which ritual expenditure is represented as materially draining. The verse records this as the speaker’s interpretation within the narrative voice, not as a quantified economic claim.
Several phrases employ compressed, idiomatic compounds typical of Sanskrit verse, such as caraṇatalahata (‘struck by the sole’) and umākānta-pūjā-nimitta (‘on the occasion/cause of worship of Umākānta’). The expression svavadana-vivare dhāryate (‘kept in the mouth-opening’) is rhetorically striking and may function as a metaphor for silencing, restraint, or control; its literal wording invites philological scrutiny and comparison with parallel usages in other anthologies.