A History of Sanskrit Literature c31.s2: 2. The Content and Form of the Kauṭilīya Arthaçāstra

A History of Sanskrit Literature c31.s2

Language: English

c31.s2.2 — 4 parts

2. The Content and Form of the Kauṭilīya Arthaçāstra

c31.s2.1

As usual we find as the earliest preserved text a work exhibiting every sign of a long prior development, which, however, by reason of its completeness has deprived earlier treatises of the possibility of survival. The *Arthaçāstra* made known to us in 1909, is unquestionably one of the most interesting works in Sanskrit, because it affords a vast amount of detailed information about the practical side of Indian life as opposed to the spiritual, and, while in parts it covers ground touched on in the treatises on Dharma, it does so with a wealth and accuracy of detail which is completely other than the often vague generalities which are the stock-in-trade of these texts. As we have it, the book is divided into fifteen great sections, Adhikaraṇas, and 180 subdivisions, Prakaraṇas, but this division is crossed by one into chapters, Adhyāyas, which are marked off from the prose of the work by the insertion of verses summing up the doctrine expounded above. There is the possibility that this division is secondary, possibly also the verses which mark it out.

c31.s2.2.1

Adhikaraṇa i deals with the bringing up and education of a prince. He is to study philosophy including Sāṁkhya, Yoga, and the Lokāyata, religion including the Vedas and Vedāṅgas—the *Arthaçāstra* accepts wholesale the Brahmanical theory of the castes and their duties,—economics, agriculture, pastoral pursuits, trade and industry, and polity, Daṇḍanīti. The ministers of the king, his council, are described, and above all his spies who serve him to secure a firm hold over all within the realm, high and low, from the princes of his house who aim at his death to the humblest people; his emissaries abroad are spies as well as ambassadors, and spies serve to keep him informed of all that happens to his neighbours. His duties are enumerated, a crushing burden in seeming. His harem receives elaborate attention and insistence is laid on the dangers to which he is exposed in it, historic examples being heaped up of kings slain there. But not only in the palace, but also in streets and all public places, elaborate precaution is necessary for the royal safety from assassination. In the following book we have given in detail the duties of a vast army of inspectors, showing the detailed control of administration exercised in an Indian state. In iii law is discussed, while in iv is taken up the topic of the repression of evil-doers by police action and heavy penalties;

c31.s2.2.2

cheating doctors and tradesmen are among those denounced, while measures are taken to prevent artificial increase of prices, adulteration, use of false weights, &c. Book v is instructive; it explains how a king can rid himself of a minister of whom he is tired, either by sending him on an expedition and providing bravos to set on him and slay him at the front, or by procuring these ruffians to allow themselves to be captured with weapons on them in the royal presence, when they confess that they were agents of the obnoxious minister who is then promptly disposed of. But not less ingenious are the means of extorting taxes to fill the treasury. The peasantry and handworkers are to be cajoled or threatened into parting with their goods, spies are to induce rich men to offer benevolences, miraculous appearances of temples and statues are to bring crowds flocking and tolls from them,¹ or secret agents are to pretend that there are demons in trees and collect gold to ban them, or rich men can be accused of crime, and their goods and lives forfeited. Heretics also may be plundered. With excellent taste there follows a chapter on the remuneration of the royal entourage, ranging from 48,000 to 60 *paṇas* yearly. In vi we come to more serious things; the seven elements of politics are described, the king, minister, land, fort, treasure, army, and ally, and this is followed by a purely formal analysis of inter-state relations carried out in much detail, but without life or reality.

c31.s2.2.3

Book vii deals with the six possible causes of action, peace, war, neutrality, preparation to march out, alliance, and doubtful attitude, while viii enumerates the evils that may arise from a king’s addiction to hunting, gambling, women, and drink, and the misfortunes which fire, water, or other cause may bring on a land. Books ix and x deal with war; the king is given abundant ruses to avoid a fair fight; if he must do so, he encourages the soldiers by assuring them that he is a paid servant of the state like themselves, asks them to be true to their salt, and is aided by astrologers, priests, and bards in his efforts. But cunning is better, and in xi we are told how the king is to sow dissension in and destroy the cohesion of hostile aristocracies of warriors, for which purpose women will readily serve. In xii further means by which a weak king may aggrandize himself are adduced; spies, secret agents, bravos, poisoners, including women, can give aid, whether by murdering the enemy king, or poisoning food, or bringing about the fall of walls at places of pilgrimage. In xiii we are told how a king can capture a fortified city by spreading the view of his omniscience and enjoyment of divine favour. The former he can attain by stating things that he has learned secretly from spies, the latter by addressing and receiving replies from a statue in which an agent is concealed.

c31.s2.2.4

Or an enemy king can be tempted to hold conversation with an alleged ascetic who is four hundred years old and is about to renew his life by entering into fire; the king is asked to attend with his family the miracle, and, when thus off his guard, is disposed of, as indeed he deserves to be. But we do hear also of a genuine capture by force of arms, followed by maxims for securing the affection and loyalty of a conquered people. He is to adopt their dress and customs, respect and share in their religion, by land grants and immunity from taxation attract the favour of the upper classes, in all ways surpass the virtues, if any, of his defeated foe, because these means are the mode adapted to secure his end. With xiv we come to the Aupaniṣadika, or secret part, consisting of recipes to enable one to murder, to cause blindness or madness, and so on. A man is taught also how to make himself invisible, to see in the dark, to fast for a month, to walk unharmed through fire, to change his colour, to send men and beasts to sleep; the text is extremely obscure, but we cannot reject it on that ground or because of its—to us worthless—character. The last book gives a plan of the work, and sets forth with examples thirty-two methodological principles used in the discussion, a number contrasting remarkably with the five or six elsewhere known.

c31.s2.3

¹ The bartering of statues referred to by Patañjali is not here noticed; cf. chap. xxi, § 2.

c31.s2.4

The *Arthaçāstra* has often been regarded as comparable to the works of Machiavelli,¹ but there is a certain misunderstanding in such a view. The work is in no sense intended as a treatise on political philosophy; the author remains throughout on the basis of Brahmanical belief. For discussions of fundamental issues such as the relation of right and might, of fate and human endeavour, even the origin of the kingship, we must go to the epic or Buddhist texts.² The *Arthaçāstra* accepts the existence of the three aims of life, Dharma, Artha, and Kāma; it holds Artha the most important, but makes no effort to determine the relation of the three or to derive them from any rational basis. It is content to hold that government is essential to them all; without it there would be the reign of anarchy in which fish eats fish; under the sceptre the four castes and their ordered ways of life prosper, Dharma, Artha, Kāma are fulfilled. The state, we may say with Machiavelli and Mussolini, is all in all, but the *Arthaçāstra* means something quite definite by the state, namely an order of society which the state does not create, but which it exists to secure. The ways of a king, for the text assumes that rule must be royal, are dictated by the necessity of preserving his power; as Hobbes logically and deliberately, so the *Arthaçāstra* implicitly argues, the king's duty of securing the welfare of the system of which he is protector gives to him a morality of his own. It is not much use comparing with this such dicta as Spinoza's¹ *uniuscuiusque ius potentia eius definitur*, or the Hegelian theory of the state; these are philosophical doctrines based on reasonings which the *Arthaçāstra* does not touch. What we have instead is the carrying out quite consistently of the doctrine that the end, the maintenance of a firm rule, justifies the means, coupled with the assumption that a reign of peace between neighbouring states is not to be dreamed of, so that in addition to maintaining peace in the realm the king must always be prepared for foreign war. In the use of means to secure obedience and to defeat enemies the *Arthaçāstra* is as ruthless as Machiavelli: spies abound, the harem and the royal family are suspect, and princes are deliberately debauched to prevent their rending, like crabs, their parent; orthodox as is the work, it advocates the shameless use of religion as a cloak for baseness. Moreover, it lacks the redeeming quality of Machiavelli, his historical method which makes him turn at every hand to the facts of history; at best the *Arthaçāstra* gives us names of kings who came to grief by one fault or another. Nor have we anything to compare with Machiavelli's investigations as to the best form of government for a state, in which he reveals his preference for a measure of democratic rule. The *Arthaçāstra* recognizes the risks run by a king from court intrigues, military oligarchical factions, false ministers, unruly heads of gilds; it even seems to recognize him as no more than a servant of the state, but of control by the people or constitutional limitations it knows nothing.

c31.s2.5

¹ C. Formichi, *Salus Populi, Saggio di scienza politica* (1908). Cf. Meinecke, *Die Idee der Staatsräson* (1924).

c31.s2.6

² See Hillebrandt, *Altindische Politik* (1923).

c31.s2.7

¹ Eth. iv. 37 sch.

c31.s2.8

The form of the work is said to be a prose Sūtra with Bhāṣya, commentary, both by the same hand, but we cannot with certainty say what was intended to be Sūtra, what comment; the headings of chapters are clearly too slight to form the Sūtra, and a collection of Sūtras ascribed to Cāṇakya is merely a list of maxims rather of the didactic moral type than suited to the *Arthaçāstra*. The work, therefore, is rather a blending into one of the two elements. Occasional verses, usually Çlokas, but sometimes Triṣṭubhs, are inserted, and each chapter as we have the text ends with a few verses summarizing its effect. The dryness of mere exposition in dogmatic form is broken here and there by the exposition of a series of views of authorities; thus, as regards choice of ministers the issue is developed by setting out the divergent opinions of Bhāradvāja, Viçālākṣa, Parāçara, Piçuna, Kauṇapadanta, Vātavyādhi, Bāhudantīputra, and Kauṭilya, who in this case accepts the conclusion of Bāhudantīputra. The view that this is a sober setting down of actual views may be regarded as implausible in the extreme; it is doubtless rather a device, introduced to lend liveliness and to set out conflicting views which might actually or more often conceivably be held. The same device is adopted in Buddhist texts, where possible philosophical opinions are asserted to be actually held.

c31.s2.9

The language of the text is as a rule correct, occasional irregularities being often probably due to the manuscript tradition rather than the author. It naturally abounds in rare words drawn from technical science, and hence the meaning is often obscure. There is much effective expression of shrewd and hard common sense, and as usual the author appears to best advantage in pithy verses:

c31.s2.10

*prajāsukhe sukhaṁ rājñaḥ prajānāṁ ca hite hitam*
*nātmapriyaṁ hitaṁ rājñaḥ prajānāṁ tu priyaṁ hitam.*

c31.s2.11

‘In the happiness of his people lies the happiness of the king, in their well-being his well-being; his own pleasure is not the king’s well-being, but the pleasure of his people is his well-being.’

c31.s2.12

*yathā hy anāsvādayituṁ na çakyaṁ: jihvātalaṣthaṁ madhu vā viṣaṁ vā*
*arthas tathā hy arthacareṇa rājñaḥ: svalpo ’py anāsvādayituṁ na çakyaḥ.*
*matsyā yathāntas salile caranto: jñātuṁ na çakyās salilaṁ pibantaḥ*
*yuktās tathā kāryavidhau niyuktā: jñātuṁ na çakyā dhanam ādadānāḥ.*

c31.s2.13

‘Even as what lies on the tongue, be it honey or poison, cannot but be tasted, so a little at least of the royal gold that a minister handles must be savoured by him. Even as when fish move within the water one cannot know if they drink water or not, so it is impossible to say of ministers entrusted with business whether or not they help themselves to the royal treasure.’

Linked texts (1)

Kauṭilīya Arthaśāstra — Kauṭilya, Sanskrit