India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c13.28

c13.28

*PĀṆINI AND KAUṬILYA*—It has been argued that Kauṭilya writes a language which, though archaic in certain respects is decidedly later than the language of the *Ashṭādhyāyī* (Thieme, *Pāṇini and the Veda*, p. 80). From the foregoing studies it is apparent that the works of both authors know of many similar institutions. Sometimes the *Arthaśāstra* appears as the best commentary on Pāṇini in regard to certain specific and peculiar terms referred to by both, e.g. *Maireya*, *Kāpiśāyana*, *Devapatha*, *Ākranda*, *Yuktarohī*, *Upanishad*, *Vinaya*, *Parishad*, *Vishya*, *Śvāgaṇika*, *Āpamityaka*, *Yāchitaka*, *Ārya-kṛita*, *Yaujana-śatika Dūta*, *Ashadakshīṇa*, *Vyushṭa*, *Vaiyushṭa* transactions, *Purusha* and *Hastī* measures, *Kedāra*, *Parīkheyī*, *Māhisha*, *Adhyaksha*, *Yukta*, *Avakraya*, etc. In the foregoing studies we have oft-times dealt with institutions of all kinds which are not only similar but sometimes identical in the *Ashṭādhyāyī* and the *Arthaśāstra*. The common evidence of the names of punch-marked coins, as well as weights and measures, as noticed in the body of this work, furnishes some striking parallels between Pāṇini and Kauṭilya. As Thieme puts it, Kauṭilya was junior to Pāṇini and the period of one century may reasonably be allowed to have intervened between the two.