A History of Sanskrit Literature c31.s3.3

c31.s3.3

It is significant that, though we hear of Cāṇakya in the Purāṇas and later texts as the minister of Candragupta, and though the *Mudrārākṣasa* makes an interesting figure of him, we have not the slightest reference there or elsewhere to his literary activity. Doubt has even been cast on his historic character, for Megasthenes, the ambassador of Seleukos who spent a considerable time at the court of Candragupta, does not mention him; but, owing to our fragmentary knowledge of Megasthenes, this argument cannot be stressed. Nor can we make much progress by discussing the probability whether an Indian statesman would write memoirs like Bismarck, for, while the indifference to morality and the insistence on distrust as a quality of a wise king are common to both, there is all the difference in the world between the detailed accounts of real events in which he figured given in Bismarck's *Gedanken und Erinnerungen*¹ and the absolutely general and very pedantic utterances of the *Arthaçāstra*, which never anywhere hints that its author had any knowledge of the overthrow of the Nandas and the wars which brought Candragupta his empire and the cessions made by Seleukos. His sovereign's name, his family, what is still more amazing his country, his capital, are passed over in absolute silence by this alleged ancient statesman meditating in his days of retirement on the maxims of policy. The rules laid down are those which might be valuable for a moderate-sized state, and ignore entirely the issue of the government of an empire such as that of Candragupta. So complete does the impossibility of such silence appear to be that one critic,² accepting the genuineness of the ascription, explains the book as written before Candragupta acquired the empire. This is a candid admission but really serves to prove that the claim is absurd.