Shloka 3
Qualities of the Wise — Chanakya Niti
सुकुले योजयेत्कन्यां पुत्रं विद्यासु योजयेत् ।
व्यसने योजयेच्छत्रुं मित्रं धर्मेण योजयेत् ॥
sukule yojayet kanyāṃ putraṃ vidyāsu yojayet |
vyasane yojayec chatruṃ mitraṃ dharmeṇa yojayet ||
The verse describes a traditional scheme of social placement and strategic alignment: a daughter is associated with a ‘good family’, a son with fields of learning, an enemy with times of adversity (as a factor to be engaged or accounted for), and a friend with dharma (ethical duty or normative order).
FAQs
In the Chanakya-nīti/ nītiśāstra milieu, verses often compress household ethics and political prudence into parallel clauses. The reference to arranging a daughter with a ‘good family’ reflects historically attested kinship and marriage-alliance practices in many elite strata of early South Asian societies, while the emphasis on a son’s placement in learning aligns with the valorization of vidyā as a resource for status and governance. The enemy/friend pair reflects a political worldview attentive to alliances, rivalry, and the management of crisis.
Here dharma functions as a legitimating framework for social and interpersonal bonds, especially friendship: the phrasing suggests that friendship is ideally situated within (or evaluated by) dharma understood as customary-ethical order, duty, and socially recognized right conduct, rather than merely by expedience.
The repeated verb yojayet (‘should be joined/placed/assigned’) creates a catalog-like structure typical of aphoristic Sanskrit, presenting four domains—marriage alliance, education, adversity, and ethical association—as parallel ‘placements.’ The compact pairing of vyasana (‘adversity’) with śatru (‘enemy’) reads as strategic: the enemy is framed not only as a person but as a factor that becomes salient in crisis, a common nītiśāstra tendency to treat relationships as variables in political calculus.