Shloka 18
Power and Prudence — Chanakya Niti
कः कालः कानि मित्राणि को देशः कौ व्ययागमौ ।
कश्चाहं का च मे शक्तिरिति चिन्त्यं मुहुर्मुहुः ॥
kaḥ kālaḥ kāni mitrāṇi ko deśaḥ kau vyayāgamau |
kaścāhaṃ kā ca me śaktir iti cintyaṃ muhur muhuḥ ||
What is the right time, who are my allies, what is the place, how are expense and income; who am I and what is my strength—these should be pondered again and again.
FAQs
Within the Chanakya-nīti/Nītiśāstra tradition, such verses are commonly situated in courtly and administrative milieus where decision-making is framed through recurring evaluation of circumstance (time and place), networks (allies), and resources (income and expenditure). The formulation reflects a broader early Indian political-intellectual habit of enumerating practical variables for governance and personal strategy, preserved in didactic Sanskrit verse for memorization and transmission.
The verse foregrounds paired accounting terms—vyaya (outlay) and āgama (receipt/income)—alongside kāla (timing), deśa (territory), and mitra (allies). In this presentation, financial assessment is treated as one variable among several that together describe situational analysis, rather than as a standalone moral principle.
The structure is a sequence of interrogatives (kaḥ/ko/kāni/kau/kā) forming an enumerative checklist, a common didactic technique in Sanskrit gnomic literature. The compound vyayāgamau compresses an economic dyad into a single metrical unit, and muhur muhuḥ emphasizes iteration, signaling that the inquiry is cyclical and context-sensitive rather than a one-time determination.