Shloka 21
Family and Relationships — Chanakya Niti
नराणां नापितो धूर्तः पक्षिणां चैव वायसः ।
चतुष्पादं शृगालस्तु स्त्रीणां धूर्ता च मालिनी ॥
narāṇāṃ nāpito dhūrtaḥ pakṣiṇāṃ caiva vāyasaḥ |
catuṣpādaṃ śṛgālas tu strīṇāṃ dhūrtā ca mālinī ||
Among men, the barber is deemed crafty; among birds, the crow; among four-footed beasts, the jackal; and among women, the garland-maker is deemed crafty.
FAQs
In the Nītiśāstra tradition, verses often catalogue socially recognized ‘types’ (e.g., professions, animals, and social categories) to express cautionary observations. This shloka reflects a premodern South Asian milieu in which occupational roles (such as barbers) and familiar animals (crows, jackals) carried conventional moral-symbolic associations, and it records those associations as part of a didactic anthology.
The verse does not define dhūrta through a formal description of behaviors; instead, it identifies representative exemplars across categories (human profession, birds, quadrupeds, and a female occupational label). The term dhūrta here functions as a classificatory moral descriptor within a proverb-like list rather than a technical philosophical definition.
The construction is a parallel, enumerative schema—‘among X, Y is dhūrta’—which is common in gnomic Sanskrit. The animals named (vāyasa, śṛgāla) are widely used in Indic literature as figures for opportunism or cunning, while nāpita and mālinī reflect profession-based stereotyping found in some premodern texts; philologically, the verse relies on genitive plurals (narāṇām, pakṣiṇām, strīṇām) to frame each category.