Shloka 7
Family and Relationships — Chanakya Niti
आलस्योपगता विद्या परहस्तगतं धनम् ।
अल्पबीजं हतं क्षेत्रं हतं सैन्यमनायकम् ॥
ālasyopagatā vidyā parahastagataṃ dhanam |
alpabījaṃ hataṃ kṣetraṃ hataṃ sainyam anāyakam ||
Learning overtaken by idleness becomes useless; wealth in another’s hands is insecure; a field with scant seed is ruined; an army without a leader is lost.
FAQs
In the Nīti-śāstra tradition, such verses function as compact evaluative maxims tied to governance and household economy. The paired images—learning, wealth custody, agricultural input, and military command—reflect concerns typical of early classical South Asian polities: administration of resources, agrarian productivity, and the dependence of armed forces on recognized leadership structures.
Here hata is used as a predicate meaning “rendered ineffective” or “spoiled” rather than physical destruction. The verse frames ruin as functional failure caused by a missing enabling condition: diligence for learning, possession/control for wealth, sufficient seed for cultivation, and a commander for an army.
The verse employs parallelism (four matched clauses) to create a mnemonic catalogue of dependency relations. Compounds such as आलस्योपगता (ālasyopagatā) and परहस्तगतं (parahastagataṃ) compress causal context into single lexical units, a common feature of aphoristic Sanskrit. The agrarian and military metaphors situate abstract “capacity” (vidyā) alongside materially administered domains, reinforcing a period-typical linkage between personal discipline and state/household stability.