A History of Sanskrit Literature c3.58

Language: English

c3.58.1

The curious scepticism which has marked the attitude of Indian and some European scholars towards Bhāsa has not been shown in recent work on the *Kauṭilīya Arthaçāstra*, on which I have written in the Patna memorial volume in honour of that great Indian, Sir Asutosh Mookerjee. The only ground of this differentiation of treatment appears to be the sanctity ascribed to the written word: because the work in an obviously later appended verse assures us it was written by Viṣṇugupta, i. e. Kauṭilya—the reading Kauṭalya is clearly⁶ of no value—therefore it must be so, although it seems patently absurd that the minister of an Emperor should confine his work to a moderate-sized kingdom, and should not once by word or allusion betray the name of the country for which and in which he was writing. Nevertheless there is nothing too fantastic to find defenders, though it is difficult not to feel that it is a very misplaced patriotism which asks us to admire the *Arthaçāstra* as representing the fine flower of Indian political thought. It would, indeed, be melancholy if this were the best that India could show as against the *Republic* of Plato or the *Politics* of Aristotle, or even the common-sense and worldly wisdom of the author of the tract on the constitution of Athens, formerly ascribed falsely to Xenophon. Certainly fantastic is the elaborate theory worked out by J. J.

c3.58.2

Meyer in his translation, and in his treatise *Über das Wesen der indischen Rechtsschriften und ihr Verhältnis zu einander und zu Kauṭilya* (1927). These works, produced in great difficulties, contain, amid much that is unsound and despite disconcerting changes of view, valuable contributions to our understanding of Kauṭilya, and throw light on many of the obscure sides of Indian life. But the main thesis of the author, who seeks to distinguish two sharply severed streams of literature, the one Brahmanical, essentially concerned with magic, the other of the people, practical and legal, is clearly based on a false foundation. The effort to regard the Brahmins as something apart in Indian life is one of those delusions which may find sympathy in the non-Brahmanical classes in India and in Europe, but which run counter to all that we know of Indian thought, which owes its life and strength to the Brahmins, not to warriors or rulers, still less to the commonalty. The efforts of the author¹ to establish that the *Arthaçāstra* was used by *Yājñavalkya* are certainly without weight; the evidence tends far more to show that the borrowing was the other way. Not a single passage referred to really favours the priority of the *Arthaçāstra*, but in several passages the obscurities of the *Arthaçāstra* can be readily understood by realizing that it was drawing from *Yājñavalkya*.

c3.58.3

Nor does Meyer attempt systematically¹ to prove that *Manu* is later than the *Arthaçāstra*, though on his theory of dates that text is more than a hundred years at least posterior to the *Arthaçāstra*. He has been as unable as the Indian supporters of Cāṇakya’s² authorship to explain the silence which the *Arthaçāstra* observes regarding everything imperial and its absolute ignoring of the facts as to Pāṭaliputra. His further effort³ to prove the late date of the *Gautama Dharmaçāstra* is in itself less open to objection, but his contentions are largely inconclusive⁴ and do little more than prove, what has always been admitted, that our text of that Dharmaçāstra has been considerably worked over. The main principles of the development of the legal literature remain as they were formulated by Max Müller and Bühler, and further established by Oldenberg and Jolly. Indeed, Meyer’s own view at present⁵—his conclusions lack admittedly any great fixity—is that *Baudhāyana* and *Āpastamba* are pre-Buddhist, *Vāsiṣṭha* belongs to the fourth century B.C., and *Manu* may be ascribed rather nearer to 200 B.C. than to A.D. 200; there is, however, no tolerable proof of *Vāsiṣṭha’s* posteriority to *Āpastamba*, still less that *Āpastamba* is pre-Buddhist in date. Still less convincing again are Meyer’s efforts⁶ to assign *Nārada* to a period anterior to *Manu* and *Yājñavalkya*; if we take our present texts as the basis of argument, this is certainly out of the question;

c3.58.4

if we reconstruct originals for all three, we lose ourselves in idle conjectures which, like all guesses, merely obscure knowledge. For *Yājñavalkya* there may be noted an interesting effort⁷ to reconstruct the original Smṛti on the basis of comparison with parallel texts in the *Agni* and the *Garuḍa Purāṇas*. It is very possible that the parts of the text dealing with Rājadharma and Vyavahāra have been amalgamated with a text dealing with the topics of the Gṛhyasūtras; but it is very dubious if it is possible to recover the original form of the Smṛti. It is, of course, easy to eliminate certain obviously late passages, such as those dealing with the Vināyaka- and Graha-çānti and the anatomical matter in Book iii, but the more radical analysis suggested is far less satisfactorily made out.