Shloka 1
Strategy and Survival — Chanakya Niti
मुक्तिमिच्छसि चेत्तात विषयान्विषवत्त्यज ।
क्षमार्जवदयाशौचं सत्यं पीयूषवत्पिब ॥
muktim icchasi cet tāta viṣayān viṣavat tyaja |
kṣamārjavadayāśaucaṁ satyaṁ pīyūṣavat piba ||
If you seek liberation, child, abandon sense-objects as poison; drink forbearance, straightforwardness, compassion, purity, and truth as nectar.
FAQs
In the broader Nīti-śāstra and related didactic traditions, verses often juxtapose renunciatory ideals (mukti) with warnings about attachment to viṣaya (objects of sense and desire). Such formulations reflect long-standing South Asian intellectual currents in which ethical self-regulation and truthfulness are presented as socially stabilizing virtues and as markers of cultivated conduct, circulating across courtly, scholastic, and ascetic milieus.
The verse characterizes liberation-oriented conduct through a contrastive schema: viṣaya are framed as harmful (likened to poison), while a set of virtues—kṣamā (forbearance), ārjava (uprightness), dayā (compassion), śauca (purity), and satya (truth)—are framed as beneficial (likened to nectar). The definition is conveyed through imagery rather than through technical metaphysical argument.
The couplet uses a paired metaphor (viṣa vs. pīyūṣa) to encode valuation: worldly objects are rhetorically positioned as toxic, and ethical qualities as life-sustaining. The vocative tāta (“dear one/child”) marks a didactic address typical of aphoristic instruction. The compounds viṣavat and pīyūṣavat function adverbially, indicating manner (“as if poison/nectar”), a common stylistic feature in Sanskrit gnomic poetry.