Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s20.5

c11.s20.5

The KA., it has been argued, is too cyclopaedic a work to be considered the production of a single author, and in several technical sciences, civil and military, in architecture, metallurgy and so on, it represents a state of advancement which we can hardly ascribe to India of the fourth century B. C. This ignores Kauṭilya’s express statement that he consulted all the *arthaśāstras* of his predecessors in the field (*yāvanti arthaśātrāṇi pūrvācāryaiḥ prastāvitāni*), and *arthaśāstra* is a wide term which, as Winternitz has recognised, embraces technology, science, and all knowledge of practical arts besides politics. For the knowledge of agriculture, forestry, methods of elephant-lore, horse-training, mining and so on, the author may well have drawn upon such pre-existing works. And what right has any one to judge *a priori* the level of attainment in the practical arts that could legitimately be ascribed to India of the Mauryan epoch ? Let us not forget that the Aśoka pillars still exhibit a fine polish which time and neglect have not effaced, and of which the secret is yet to be discovered by the technicians of our own age. J. J. Meyer discusses these questions more fully in his introduction to his German translation of KA.