Shloka 13
Virtue and Vice — Chanakya Niti
धनेषु जीवितव्येषु स्त्रीषु चाहारकर्मसु ।
अतृप्ताः प्राणिनः सर्वे याता यास्यन्ति यान्ति च ॥
dhaneṣu jīvitavyeṣu strīṣu cāhārakarmasu |
atṛptāḥ prāṇinaḥ sarve yātā yāsyanti yānti ca ||
In wealth, in the urge to keep living, in women, and in food and work, all beings remain unsated; thus they have gone, are going, and will go on in dissatisfaction.
FAQs
In the broader nīti (didactic) tradition, such verses function as compact moral-psychological observations suited to courtly and household instruction. The enumeration of domains—wealth, survival, sexuality/gendered relations, and sustenance/work—reflects recurring preoccupations in classical Indian ethical and political discourse, where human desire (kāma) and acquisition (artha) are treated as persistent drivers of social behavior.
Here atṛpti is presented as a generalized condition attributed to all living beings (sarve prāṇinaḥ), characterized by recurring non-satiation across several life-domains. The phrasing frames dissatisfaction less as an individual moral failing and more as a trans-temporal pattern (“have gone, go, will go”) that the tradition treats as structurally persistent.
A notable stylistic feature is the tri-temporal sequence “yātā yāsyanti yānti ca,” which compresses past, future, and present movement into a single refrain, intensifying the claim of continuity. The locative plural series (dhaneṣu… strīṣu… āhārakarmasu) operates as a catalog of spheres of attachment, and the compound āhārakarmasu couples bodily maintenance (food) with social-economic activity (work), suggesting an integrated view of livelihood and desire.