Shloka 9
Self-Discipline — Chanakya Niti
स्वयं कर्म करोत्यात्मा स्वयं तत्फलमश्नुते ।
स्वयं भ्रमति संसारे स्वयं तस्माद्विमुच्यते॥
svayaṃ karma karoty ātmā svayaṃ tatphalam aśnute |
svayaṃ bhramati saṃsāre svayaṃ tasmād vimucyate ||
The self performs its deeds itself and itself partakes of their fruits; it wanders in saṃsāra by itself, and by itself is released from it.
FAQs
In the wider Sanskrit intellectual milieu, aphoristic nīti collections often incorporate broadly shared Brahmanical philosophical vocabulary (karma, phala, saṃsāra, vimukti). This verse reflects a trans-sectarian ethical idiom common in late classical and medieval didactic literature, where personal agency and moral causality are framed as explanatory principles for social and existential outcomes.
Agency is attributed to the ātmā through repeated svayam (“oneself”), presenting a self-contained causal chain: the self performs actions, undergoes their results, continues in cyclical existence, and is also represented as the locus of release. The formulation foregrounds individual responsibility as a descriptive account of moral causation rather than invoking external arbiters.
The rhetorical force relies on anaphora (repetition) of svayam four times, producing a compact parallelism that emphasizes internal causality. The verbs (karoti, aśnute, bhramati, vimucyate) form a sequence moving from action to consequence to cyclical wandering to release, aligning ethical conduct with a cosmological register typical of Sanskrit gnomic and dharma-oriented discourse.