Shloka 18
Liberation and Truth — Chanakya Niti
दानार्थिनो मधुकरा यदि कर्णतालैर्दूरीकृताः
दूरीकृताः करिवरेण मदान्धबुद्ध्या ।
तस्यैव गण्डयुग्ममण्डनहानिरेषा
भृंगाः पुनर्विकचपद्मवने वसन्ति ॥
dānārthino madhukarā yadi karṇatālair dūrīkṛtāḥ
dūrīkṛtāḥ karivareṇa madāndhabuddhyā |
tasyaiva gaṇḍayugmamaṇḍanahānir eṣā
bhṛṅgāḥ punar vikacapadmavane vasanti ||
If honey-seeking bees are driven off by the ear-flapping of a great elephant, whose judgment is blinded by intoxication, the loss is his alone: the ornament of his two cheeks is diminished, while the bees return to dwell among fully-bloomed lotus groves.
FAQs
Within the Chanakya-nīti tradition of didactic verse, this śloka uses courtly-nature imagery familiar to classical Sanskrit audiences (elephant in rut, bees, lotus groves) to frame a historical idea about patronage and social relations: when a powerful figure rejects those who come to seek benefit, the immediate harm is portrayed as falling upon the rejector’s own prestige or ‘ornament,’ while the seekers redirect their attention elsewhere.
Loss (hāni) is presented as self-incurred: the elephant’s ‘adornment’ (maṇḍana) of the cheek-pair (gaṇḍayugma)—a poetic reference to the temples associated with rut and grandeur—diminishes when the bees depart. The verse frames the departure of dependents/seekers as a reduction of the patron’s visible splendor rather than as a moral failing stated in direct prescriptive terms.
The metaphor pivots on madāndhabuddhi (“intellect blinded by mada”), where mada denotes both literal elephant-rut and figurative intoxication/pride. The repeated dūrīkṛtāḥ emphasizes exclusion. The bees’ relocation to vikacapadmavana (a fully-bloomed lotus grove) encodes the idea of alternative patronage or alternative sources of ‘sweetness,’ a common niti motif expressed through naturalistic, court-poetic diction.