Shloka 13
Liberation and Truth — Chanakya Niti
नापितस्य गृहे क्षौरं पाषाणे गन्धलेपनम् ।
आत्मरूपं जले पश्यन् शक्रस्यापि श्रियं हरेत् ॥
nāpitasya gṛhe kṣauraṃ pāṣāṇe gandha-lepanam |
ātma-rūpaṃ jale paśyan śakrasyāpi śriyaṃ haret ||
In a barber’s house one finds no ‘shaving’; perfume-ointment does not cling to stone; and one who beholds one’s own form in water is said to be able to steal even Indra’s prosperity.
FAQs
Within the Chanakya-nīti/ nītiśāstra tradition, such verses commonly employ compressed analogies and “impossibility” motifs to frame social observation. References to occupational types (e.g., the barber) and to Vedic-Purāṇic figures (Śakra/Indra) reflect a cultural milieu where everyday social categories and mythic kingship imagery were used together to express moral-psychological and political cautions in aphoristic form.
The verse depicts “seeing one’s own form in water” as a figurative marker for fascination with appearances or self-image. In this framing, such self-absorption (or deceptive reflection) is portrayed as socially and politically potent—hyperbolically described as capable of diminishing even Indra’s “śrī” (royal fortune/prosperity).
The construction juxtaposes concrete loci (a barber’s house, stone, water) with abstract outcomes (loss of śrī). The final clause intensifies the metaphor through the cultural symbol of Śakra (Indra) as the paradigmatic possessor of sovereignty and prosperity. The sequence functions as a rhetorical crescendo, moving from mundane improbabilities to a mythic-scale consequence.