A History of Sanskrit Literature c31.s3.1

c31.s3.1

The current belief¹ which ascribes the *Arthaçāstra* to Cāṇakya or Viṣṇugupta or Kauṭilya, minister of Candragupta, rests on the verse just cited, on statements at the end of i. 1 and ii. 10 where Kauṭilya—the variant Kauṭalya has no value, being obviously a correction—appears as the author, and in the latter of which he claims to have gone through all the sciences and to have had regard to practice (*prayoga*), while a verse added at the very end, after the last colophon, says that Viṣṇugupta composed both the text and the comment, apparently because he noticed that in other cases there was discrepancy between these two important elements of a scientific work. These statements are taken to offset the fact that, by using the phrase *iti Kauṭilyaḥ* to give normally the deciding opinion in discussions, one would conclude that the work was not by the author, but was the product of a school which followed his views, as in the case of Jaimini or Bādarāyaṇa in the philosophical Sūtras. It must, however, be noted that under the explanation of Apadeça in the last book is cited one of Kauṭilya's sentences, from which the prima facie conclusion is that Kauṭilya is cited as an authority, not as the author. The case, therefore, must be solved by considerations of general probability based on what we know of Cāṇakya, and what we find in or are told about the work.