Shloka 4
Virtuous Company — Chanakya Niti
ते पुत्रा ये पितुर्भक्ताः स पिता यस्तु पोषकः ।
तन्मित्रं यत्र विश्वासः सा भार्या यत्र निर्वृतिः ॥
te putrā ye piturbhaktāḥ sa pitā yastu poṣakaḥ |
tanmitraṁ yatra viśvāsaḥ sā bhāryā yatra nirvṛtiḥ ||
Sons are those devoted to their father; a father is one who supports and sustains. A friend is where there is trust; a wife is where there is contentment.
FAQs
In the didactic nīti tradition, brief definitional couplets commonly map social roles (kinship, friendship, marriage) onto valued qualities. Such verses are typically read as reflecting elite normative ideals circulating in premodern South Asian moral and political discourse, where household stability and reliable alliances were treated as foundational to broader social order.
The verse uses “viśvāsa” (trust/confidence) as the distinguishing marker of “mitra” (friend), implying that friendship is identified by reliability rather than mere proximity. “Nirvṛti” (contentment/comfort) is linked with “bhāryā” (wife/spouse), indicating a traditional association between marriage and domestic well-being within the household frame.
The construction is aphoristic and definitional: repeated demonstratives (te/sa/tat/sā) create a formula of “X is truly X when characterized by Y.” The terms are semantically dense—e.g., “bhakti” here functions as loyalty/devotion in a kinship register, and “poṣaka” emphasizes material and protective maintenance—typical of concise nīti-style moral taxonomy.