Shloka 6
Learning and Knowledge — Chanakya Niti
पादाभ्यां न स्पृशेदग्निं गुरुं ब्राह्मणमेव च ।
नैव गां न कुमारीं च न वृद्धं न शिशुं तथा ॥
pādābhyāṁ na spṛśed agniṁ guruṁ brāhmaṇam eva ca |
naiva gāṁ na kumārīṁ ca na vṛddhaṁ na śiśuṁ tathā ||
Do not touch with your feet fire, your teacher, or a Brahmin; nor a cow, an unmarried maiden, an elder, or a child.
FAQs
In premodern Sanskrit normative literature, bodily gestures (including the feet) are frequently coded within systems of purity, respect, and hierarchy. This verse can be situated within broader dharma- and nīti-style discussions where certain persons (teacher, Brahmin, elder) and culturally significant referents (fire, cow) are treated as objects of heightened reverence, and where social vulnerability or protected status (child, maiden) is also marked through etiquette restrictions.
Respect is represented through avoidance of a particular bodily contact—touching with the feet—toward a listed set of persons and entities. The verse frames this avoidance as a conventional boundary-marker, implying that foot-contact functions as an index of insult or ritual impropriety within the text’s cultural-linguistic world.
The optative form स्पृशेत् (spṛśet) is characteristic of prescriptive registers in Sanskrit aphoristic literature, though here it is best read descriptively as reporting a norm. The list combines ritual-religious referents (अग्नि), social-authority figures (गुरु, ब्राह्मण), and socially protected categories (कुमारी, वृद्ध, शिशु), illustrating how nīti texts often group heterogeneous items under a single etiquette rule to signal an overarching ideology of deference and social order.