Shloka 1
Self-Discipline — Chanakya Niti
श्रुत्वा धर्मं विजानाति श्रुत्वा त्यजति दुर्मतिम् ।
श्रुत्वा ज्ञानमवाप्नोति श्रुत्वा मोक्षमवाप्नुयात् ॥
śrutvā dharmaṃ vijānāti śrutvā tyajati durmatim |
śrutvā jñānam avāpnoti śrutvā mokṣam avāpnuyāt ||
By hearing, one understands dharma; by hearing, one abandons misguided thought. By hearing, one gains knowledge; by hearing, one may attain liberation (mokṣa).
FAQs
Within South Asian didactic literature, especially nīti and dharma-oriented traditions, moral and practical knowledge is frequently framed as transmitted through listening to authoritative instruction (teachers, elders, learned reciters). The repeated emphasis on śravaṇa (“hearing”) reflects an intellectual milieu in which oral pedagogy and memorized textual transmission remained central even alongside manuscript culture.
The verse presents hearing as a foundational epistemic pathway: it is associated with discerning dharma, correcting faulty judgment (durmati), and acquiring jñāna. The final clause extends the same mechanism to mokṣa, indicating that instruction and reception of teaching are treated as prerequisites or enabling conditions within the broader soteriological vocabulary of classical Indian thought.
The anaphoric repetition of śrutvā (“having heard / by hearing”) functions as a rhetorical intensifier, creating a chain of results attributed to a single practice. Grammatically, avāpnuyāt is an optative form, expressing possibility rather than certainty, which aligns with a descriptive claim about potential outcomes rather than a guaranteed sequence.