Shloka 6
Strategy and Survival — Chanakya Niti
विद्यार्थी सेवकः पान्थः क्षुधार्तो भयकातरः ।
भाण्डारी प्रतिहारी च सप्त सुप्तान्प्रबोधयेत् ॥
vidyārthī sevakaḥ pānthaḥ kṣudhārto bhayakātaraḥ |
bhāṇḍārī pratihārī ca sapta suptān prabodhayet ||
A student, a servant, a traveler, one tormented by hunger, one distressed by fear, a storekeeper/treasurer, and a doorkeeper—these seven may awaken those who sleep.
FAQs
In the historical milieu reflected by nīti literature, household and courtly administration involved defined roles (e.g., treasurer/storekeeper, doorkeeper/porter, servants), alongside socially recognized vulnerable conditions (hunger, fear) and mobile figures (travelers). The verse can be read as a schematic list of persons whose needs or duties were culturally framed as sufficiently urgent to justify interrupting sleep, a valued resource in premodern daily life.
Urgency is represented through two principal lenses: (1) functional responsibility within an institution (servant, treasurer/storekeeper, doorkeeper/porter) and (2) immediate human need or risk (hunger, fear), with the student and traveler also treated as time-sensitive cases (instructional schedules; travel constraints). The verse presents this as a conventional taxonomy rather than a situational narrative.
The construction is a compact nominal list culminating in the optative verb प्रबोधयेत् (prabodhayet, “may awaken”), producing an aphoristic rule-form typical of nīti style. Several terms are institutionally marked: भाण्डारी (bhāṇḍārī) denotes a custodian of stores/treasury, and प्रतिहारी (pratihārī) denotes a gatekeeper/attendant controlling access—both reflecting administrative vocabulary. The pairing of abstract states (hunger, fear) with occupational titles suggests a rhetorical blending of existential necessity and bureaucratic duty as parallel grounds for interruption.