Shloka 11
Virtue and Vice — Chanakya Niti
अतिक्लेशेन यद्द्रव्यमतिलोभेन यत्सुखम् ।
शत्रूणां प्रणिपातेन ते ह्यर्था मा भवन्तु मे ॥
atikleśena yaddravyam atilobhena yatsukham |
śatrūṇāṃ praṇipātena te hyarthā mā bhavantu me ||
Wealth gained by excessive hardship, pleasure born of excessive greed, and profit secured by bowing to enemies—may these never become my aims.
FAQs
In the broader niti (prudential-ethical) literature associated with courtly and administrative milieus, the verse reflects concerns about legitimate acquisition and the preservation of standing in adversarial political environments. It situates wealth (dravya), pleasure (sukha), and aims (artha) within a framework where the means of obtaining them—excessive exertion, greed, or humiliating dependence on rivals—are treated as historically problematic for elite self-conception and statecraft culture.
Here, artha is used in the sense of 'object of pursuit' or 'advantage' rather than as a technical category alone. The verse frames certain outcomes (wealth, pleasure, gains) as not worthy to be counted among one’s arthas when they are tied to socially and politically compromising means, indicating a qualitative evaluation of ends by their sources.
The construction is a triadic parallelism: 'yad-dravyam... yat-sukham... (and implied) ye arthāḥ...' each qualified by an instrumental phrase (atikleśena, atilobhena, praṇipātena). The repeated 'yat' clauses create a catalog of suspect acquisitions, while 'praṇipāta' (bowing/submission) functions as a culturally loaded marker of diminished autonomy in hostile relations, a recurrent theme in classical Sanskrit political vocabulary.