Shloka 2
Self-Discipline — Chanakya Niti
पक्षिणः काकश्चण्डालः पशूनां चैव कुक्कुरः ।
मुनीनां पापश्चण्डालः सर्वचाण्डालनिन्दकः ॥
pakṣiṇaḥ kākaś caṇḍālaḥ paśūnāṃ caiva kukkuraḥ |
munīnāṃ pāpaś caṇḍālaḥ sarvacaṇḍālanindakaḥ ||
Among birds, the crow is called a caṇḍāla; among animals, the dog likewise. Among sages, the sinful one is a caṇḍāla—and he is the one who reviles all caṇḍālas.
FAQs
In pre-modern Sanskrit gnomic and nīti literature, social categories such as “caṇḍāla” could function both as references to marginal social groups and as generalized terms of stigma. This verse reflects a period idiom in which animals and human types are ranked through moralized or purity-based metaphors, a common feature of didactic anthologies circulating in courtly and scholastic milieus.
Within this verse, “caṇḍāla” operates primarily as a metaphor for the lowest or most disfavored member within a set (birds, animals, ascetics). The usage is comparative and rhetorical rather than ethnographic, aligning the term with notions of impurity and social exclusion as conceptual tools in moral classification.
The construction uses genitive plurals (“pakṣiṇaḥ,” “paśūnām,” “munīnām”) to mark domains and then assigns a stigmatized label as the ‘lowest exemplar’ within each domain. The closing compound “sarvacaṇḍālanindakaḥ” adds an ironic turn: it characterizes the ‘sinful’ ascetic not only as stigmatized but also as one who stigmatizes others, a rhetorical move that intensifies moral condemnation through social-language inversion.