Shloka 20
Virtue and Vice — Chanakya Niti
पुस्तकस्था तु या विद्या परहस्तगतं धनं ।
कार्यकाले समुत्पन्ने न सा विद्या न तद्धनम् ॥
pustakasthā tu yā vidyā parahastagataṃ dhanaṃ |
kāryakāle samutpanne na sā vidyā na taddhanam ||
Learning that stays in a book, and wealth that lies in another’s hands—when the time of need arrives, that is neither learning nor wealth.
FAQs
In the broader nīti-śāstra milieu, such verses commonly reflect an elite, pragmatic moral vocabulary associated with household management, courtly life, and administrative culture, where knowledge is evaluated by its availability for application and wealth by its accessibility for use in contingencies.
Learning (vidyā) is framed as effective when it is internalized and deployable in a practical situation, while wealth (dhana) is framed as effective when it is under one’s control; both are treated as functionally absent when they cannot be accessed at the moment of action (kāryakāla).
The compound “पुस्तकस्था” (pustakasthā, ‘book-situated’) serves as a metaphor for unassimilated knowledge, while “परहस्तगतं” (parahastagataṃ, ‘in another’s hand’) concretizes dependence and lack of control; the parallel structure (“na sā vidyā na taddhanam”) intensifies the functional equivalence between inaccessible knowledge and inaccessible resources.