Shloka 4
Self-Discipline — Chanakya Niti
भ्रमन्सम्पूज्यते राजा भ्रमन्सम्पूज्यते द्विजः ।
भ्रमन्सम्पूज्यते योगी स्त्री भ्रमन्ती विनश्यति ॥
bhramansampūjyate rājā bhramansampūjyate dvijaḥ |
bhramansampūjyate yogī strī bhramantī vinaśyati ||
A king is honored even while roaming; a twice-born (learned) man is honored even while roaming. A yogin is honored even while roaming; but a woman who roams is said to come to ruin.
FAQs
In the broader Nītiśāstra tradition, aphorisms often encode assumed social hierarchies and ideals of public conduct. This verse reflects a premodern normative framework in which public mobility is framed as appropriate and honorific for certain male-coded roles (ruler, learned elite, ascetic), while women’s mobility is portrayed negatively, a stance consistent with many patriarchal legal-ethical discourses preserved in Sanskrit literature.
Mobility (bhraman) is treated as a marker of role-appropriate activity: the king’s touring can be read as political presence and oversight, the dvija’s movement as social-recognized learning or ritual function, and the yogin’s wandering as ascetic practice. The depiction of a wandering woman leading to “ruin” functions as a conventionalized warning within that historical moral economy rather than an empirical claim.
The repeated construction “bhraman-sampūjyate” creates a rhythmic parallelism that foregrounds social contrast. The term dvija is culturally loaded, often indexing varṇa-based status and learning. The final clause shifts from passive honor (“is honored”) to an active outcome (“vinaśyati”), intensifying the contrast and signaling a moralized consequence typical of aphoristic didactic style.