Shloka 11
Qualities of the Wise — Chanakya Niti
उद्योगे नास्ति दारिद्र्यं जपतो नास्ति पातकम् ।
मौनेन कलहो नास्ति नास्ति जागरिते भयम् ॥
udyoge nāsti dāridryaṃ japato nāsti pātakam |
maunena kalaho nāsti nāsti jāgarite bhayam ||
With sustained effort there is no poverty; for one who recites, there is no sin. Through silence there is no quarrel; through wakeful vigilance there is no fear.
FAQs
Within the Chanakya-nīti/Nītiśāstra tradition, such verses function as compact maxims circulating in pedagogical and courtly environments, reflecting broadly shared early Indian ideals: economic stability linked to enterprise, moral merit linked to ritual speech (japa), social harmony linked to restraint, and security linked to vigilance. The formulation is characteristic of subhāṣita-style ethical literature used for instruction and memorization.
The term jāgarita is framed as a condition of wakeful attentiveness rather than literal sleeplessness alone. In the idiom of Nīti literature, it commonly denotes preparedness and watchfulness—qualities associated with personal safety and, by extension, with administrative or household security.
The verse is structured as a four-part parallelism using repeated negation (nāsti) to create a mnemonic chain of cause-and-effect associations. Each pāda pairs an abstract risk (poverty, sin, quarrel, fear) with a culturally salient counter-condition (enterprise, japa, silence, vigilance), producing a compressed moral-psychological taxonomy typical of Sanskrit gnomic composition.