Shloka 5
Virtue and Vice — Chanakya Niti
न निर्मितो न चैव न दृष्टपूर्वो
न श्रूयते हेममयः कुरंगः ।
तथाऽपि तृष्णा रघुनन्दनस्य
विनाशकाले विपरीतबुद्धिः ॥
na nirmito na caiva na dṛṣṭapūrvo
na śrūyate hemamayaḥ kuraṅgaḥ |
tathā’pi tṛṣṇā raghunandanasya
vināśakāle viparītabuddhiḥ ||
A deer of gold is neither made, nor ever seen before, nor even heard of; yet the craving of the “delight of the Raghu line” became perverted judgment at the hour of ruin.
FAQs
In the wider Sanskrit literary milieu, the ‘golden deer’ functions as a well-known narrative motif, most prominently in Rāmāyaṇa traditions, where an illusory object provokes pursuit and precipitates crisis. In a Nīti-śāstra setting, the verse can be read as an intertextual exemplum used to illustrate how desire may distort judgment, especially in moments framed as politically or personally ruinous.
Here tṛṣṇā is presented as a craving directed toward an object characterized as non-existent in ordinary experience (neither made, seen, nor even heard of). The verse depicts desire less as a neutral preference and more as a condition associated with viparītabuddhi—cognitive inversion—linked to vināśa (ruin).
The negation series (na… na… na… na) builds a philological emphasis on the object’s implausibility, heightening the contrast with ‘tathāpi’ (“nevertheless”), which marks the paradox of continued pursuit. ‘Hemamayaḥ kuraṅgaḥ’ operates as a metaphor for an alluring but unreal prize, while ‘viparītabuddhiḥ’ frames the episode as a reversal of discernment, a common diagnostic term in ethical and didactic Sanskrit discourse.