Shloka 22
Ethics of Action — Chanakya Niti
मांसभक्ष्यैः सुरापानैर्मुखैश्चाक्षरवर्जितैः ।
पशुभिः पुरुषाकारैर्भाराक्रान्ता हि मेदिनी ॥
māṁsabhakṣyaiḥ surāpānair mukhaiś cākṣaravarjitaiḥ |
paśubhiḥ puruṣākārair bhārākrāntā hi medinī ||
The earth is weighed down by beasts in human form—meat-eaters, drinkers of liquor, and mouths without letters (without learning).
FAQs
In the broader genre of Nītiśāstra, such verses reflect elite literary ideals in which learning (akṣara/vidyā) and controlled conduct are treated as markers of social refinement. The imagery of the earth ‘overburdened’ by degraded human behavior is a conventional moral-political trope found across classical Sanskrit didactic literature, used to frame concerns about social order and the decline of disciplined norms.
The expression “akṣaravarjita” (‘devoid of letters’) functions as a shorthand for the absence of education, cultivated speech, or disciplined intellectual formation. The verse contrasts outward human appearance (“puruṣākāra”) with an inner lack of culturally valued qualities, presenting illiteracy or lack of learning as a key indicator of diminished status within the text’s moral vocabulary.
The compound “paśubhiḥ puruṣākāraiḥ” is a pointed metaphor: ‘beasts’ who merely have the ‘shape of men.’ The phrase “mukhaiś cākṣaravarjitaiḥ” uses ‘mouths’ as a metonym for speech and learning, implying that the absence of ‘letters’ manifests socially through uncultivated discourse. The overall construction combines behavioral markers (meat-eating, drinking) with intellectual markers (lack of akṣara) to produce a moralized typology rather than a literal zoological claim.