Shloka 23
Ethics of Action — Chanakya Niti
अन्नहीनो दहेद्राष्ट्रं मन्त्रहीनश्च ऋत्विजः ।
यजमानं दानहीनो नास्ति यज्ञसमो रिपुः ॥
annahīno dahed rāṣṭraṃ mantrahīnaś ca ṛtvijaḥ |
yajamānaṃ dānahīno nāsti yajñasamo ripuḥ ||
A realm without food is consumed; a priest without mantras ruins the rite; a sacrificer without gifts harms the sacrifice. No enemy equals a sacrifice when its supports are lacking.
FAQs
The verse reflects a milieu in which political stability (rāṣṭra) and ritual order (yajña) were both conceptualized as systems requiring material inputs and specialized expertise. In early Indian socio-political structures, grain/provisions functioned as a foundational resource for sustaining households, armies, and administration, while Vedic-style ritual culture depended on trained officiants (ṛtvij) and on patronage (yajamāna) expressed through dāna (gifts/fees). The formulation preserves a historical view that institutional failure can arise from missing prerequisites rather than external attack alone.
Resource deficiency is framed as an internal, system-level vulnerability: lack of food/provisions is portrayed as consuming the state, lack of mantras is portrayed as nullifying priestly function, and lack of gifts is portrayed as damaging the patron’s ritual project. The verse thus treats provisioning, specialized knowledge (mantra), and redistributive patronage (dāna) as enabling conditions whose absence produces outcomes comparable to hostility.
The metaphor hinges on the verb-root √dah (“to burn/consume”), using “burning” as an image for systemic collapse. The parallel compounds (annahīna-, mantrahīna-, dānahīna-) create a triadic structure of lack (hīna) applied to different social functions (state, priest, patron). The concluding phrase “nāsti yajñasamo ripuḥ” employs a rhetorical superlative: the sacrifice itself is characterized as the greatest ‘enemy’ when its supporting conditions are absent, emphasizing internal contradiction and self-defeat rather than an external adversary.