A History of Sanskrit Literature c3.58.1

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.