Shloka 4
Power and Prudence — Chanakya Niti
यावत्स्वस्थो ह्ययं देहो यावन्मृत्युश्च दूरतः ।
तावदात्महितं कुर्यात्प्राणान्ते किं करिष्यति ॥
yāvat svastho hy ayaṃ deho yāvan mṛtyuś ca dūrataḥ |
tāvad ātmahitaṃ kuryāt prāṇānte kiṃ kariṣyati ||
The verse describes a traditional view that, so long as the body remains healthy and death is still distant, one undertakes what is considered beneficial for oneself; when life-breath reaches its end, it suggests, little remains to be done.
FAQs
Within the Cāṇakya-nīti/Nītiśāstra milieu, such verses commonly function as didactic aphorisms circulating in educational and courtly settings, emphasizing time-sensitive action and human mortality. The framing reflects broader South Asian literary conventions where bodily health and the nearness of death serve as markers for the limited window of effective agency.
In this verse, ātmahita appears as a general category of personal welfare or advantage rather than a narrowly specified moral program. The formulation leaves the content of “benefit” open, while highlighting the temporal condition: such pursuits are depicted as meaningful primarily before the terminal stage (prāṇānta).
The contrastive structure yāvat...tāvat (“so long as...until then”) is a common Sanskrit rhetorical device for delimiting a practical horizon. The phrase mṛtyuś ca dūrataḥ (“death is distant”) uses spatial distance metaphorically for temporal remoteness, while prāṇānte (“at the end of life-breath”) employs prāṇa as a culturally salient metonym for life itself, marking the point beyond which action is portrayed as ineffective.