A History of Sanskrit Literature c3.58.2

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*.