Shloka 15
Family and Relationships — Chanakya Niti
विद्या मित्रं प्रवासे च भार्या मित्रं गृहेषु च ।
व्याधितस्यौषधं मित्रं धर्मो मित्रं मृतस्य च ॥
vidyā mitraṃ pravāse ca bhāryā mitraṃ gṛheṣu ca |
vyādhitasya auṣadhaṃ mitraṃ dharmo mitraṃ mṛtasya ca ||
On the road, learning is a friend; at home, a wife is a friend; for the sick, medicine is a friend; for the dead, dharma is a friend.
FAQs
In the Chanakya-nīti tradition, such verses commonly catalogue socially valued supports across life situations (travel, household life, illness, death). This reflects a premodern South Asian milieu in which education functioned as portable capital, household relations were central to domestic stability, medicine represented practical relief during disease, and dharma denoted the trans-temporal framework of merit and ritual-moral order extending beyond death.
Here mitra operates as a metaphor for dependable support rather than a single social role: knowledge supports mobility and negotiation; the spouse is framed as domestic companionship and assistance; medicine is practical aid in illness; and dharma is presented as the enduring support connected with posthumous reputation, merit, and ritual conceptions of the afterlife.
The verse uses parallel clauses with repeated “X mitram” to create a mnemonic catalogue. The semantic range of mitra (‘friend/ally’) is broadened to include abstractions (vidyā, dharma) and instruments (auṣadha), illustrating a common Sanskrit didactic technique in nīti literature: mapping different domains of life onto a single relational metaphor of reliable alliance.