One of Dhritarashtra’s ministers. He was a very shrewd politician and the advice he gave the king was known as Kanika’s Kutaneeti.

Once Dhritarashtra asked Kanika how to kill enemies using Sama, Dana, Bheda, Danda. He said that cowards should be made to feel scared, the brave should be made to feel comfortable and then killed by guile, the greedy should be dealt with using money, and if an enemy, he should be killed whether it be son, brother, friend, father or teacher. ONe should not utter words in anger and should not believe the words of those trusted or mistrusted.

Once Kanika told Dhritarashtra a story. There once lived a crafty jackal in the forest who wanted to eat the king of the forest – the lion. He took the help of a tiger, a rat, a fox and a mongoose. He asked the rat to gnaw away the lion’s feet while he was sleeping and asked the tiger to then kill the lame lion. They killed the lion and as per the jackal’s advice decided to eat it after a bath. The jackal guarded the body while they bathed. The tiger returned first. The jackal pretended to be sad and when the tiger asked for the reason, he said that the rat had claimed that he had killed the lion. Considering that, the jackal said that his pride didn’t allow him to eat the lion’s meat. On hearing this, the tiger said he was going away to see if he could hunt a lion on his own. The rat arrived next and the jackal told him that the mongoose had refused to eat the meat since it was poison and had wanted the rat to eat it and die. The rat too left on hearing this. When the fox arrived to eat the meat, the jackal told him that another lion was planning to attack them and that he should do the needful. The fox ran away. When the mongoose came for its share, the jackal chased him away and had the lion’s meat all to himself.

Kanika told this to Dhritarashtra as an advice to win over his enemies as per Mahabharata Adiparva Chapter 139.