Shloka 23
Family and Relationships — Chanakya Niti
राजपत्नी गुरोः पत्नी मित्रपत्नी तथैव च ।
पत्नीमाता स्वमाता च पञ्चैता मातरः स्मृताः ॥
rājapatnī guroḥ patnī mitrapatnī tathaiva ca |
patnīmātā svamātā ca pañcaitā mātaraḥ smṛtāḥ ||
The king’s wife, the teacher’s wife, a friend’s wife, one’s wife’s mother, and one’s own mother—these five women are remembered as ‘mothers’.
FAQs
The verse reflects a premodern South Asian honorific-kinship idiom in which certain socially protected or revered women were linguistically placed under the category ‘mother.’ Such classifications appear across Dharmaśāstra and Nīti literature as part of etiquette, hierarchy, and social restraint within courtly, pedagogical, and household settings.
In this verse, ‘mother’ functions as a social designation rather than a strictly biological one. The text enumerates five relations—queen, teacher’s wife, friend’s wife, mother-in-law, and biological mother—as persons to be conceptually treated within a maternal honor category in the tradition being cited.
The key term is mātṛ-/mātaraḥ (‘mother/mothers’) used as an honorific label that extends beyond literal maternity. The closing smṛtāḥ (‘are remembered/are regarded’) signals an appeal to received tradition (smṛti-style phrasing), presenting the list as a conventional remembrance rather than a newly argued doctrine.