Shloka 5
Ethics of Action — Chanakya Niti
चाण्डालानां सहस्रैश्च सूरिभिस्तत्त्वदर्शिभिः ।
एको हि यवनः प्रोक्तो न नीचो यवनात्परः ॥
cāṇḍālānāṁ sahasraiś ca sūribhis tattvadarśibhiḥ |
eko hi yavanaḥ prokto na nīco yavanāt paraḥ ||
Even set against thousands of caṇḍālas and sages who see the truth, a single “yavana” is called the lowest; nothing is regarded as lower than a yavana.
FAQs
In Sanskrit literary and didactic traditions, terms such as caṇḍāla and yavana often function as markers within social-taxonomic discourse. ‘Yavana’ appears across classical sources as an ethnonym for external groups (frequently associated with Greeks or western foreigners in early strata, later broadened), while caṇḍāla denotes a category treated as socially marginal in some Brahmanical normative texts. This verse reflects a polemical ranking idiom found in parts of premodern didactic literature rather than an empirical description of lived social realities.
The verse frames inferiority through comparative rhetoric: it asserts a superlative low status for the category ‘yavana,’ presenting it as lower than other negatively coded categories and even juxtaposing it against learned figures. The logic is categorical and rhetorical, using social labels as moralized symbols rather than offering a procedural definition.
Linguistically, the construction uses emphatic particles and comparative phrasing (eko hi… na… paraḥ) to produce a superlative claim. Metaphorically and rhetorically, the verse employs social labels (caṇḍāla, yavana) as intensifiers within a hierarchy-making trope common to some nīti-style maxims, foregrounding boundary-making between ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ categories in period discourse.