[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [Polity, law and society](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity) › [Hindu Administrative Institutions](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.dikshitar-1929) › c5.3 # Hindu Administrative Institutions c5.3 Hindu Administrative Institutions c5.3 - **Language:** English ### [c5.3](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.dikshitar-1929.c5.3) What follows is an attempt at reconstructing Hindu administrative institutions primarily from the first of these four items, letting in information wherever available from the other sources to fill in where necessary and complete the account of the institutions as given in the Kauṭilīya Text Book. This itself is adequate work for the time that the research student had for doing this. It may be that he is enabled to complete the work in the future; but, as it is, the work is an attempt at doing this and no more. The discovery of the Arthaśāstra of Kauṭilya, now called Kauṭalya, more popularly called Cāṇakya, may be regarded, in some respects at any rate, epoch making. The publication in 1909 of the text by Dr. R. Shama Sastri and a partial translation in the pages of the Indian Antiquary immediately set scholars at work; and since then many books have been written on the subject and one may fairly expect many more perhaps before the subject is exhausted. All of them have the general object of expounding the Arthaśāstra in an attempt to present a complete picture of the administrative institutions of Hindu India. Each one of these works has its own particular merit, and perhaps even its own particular contribution. But what may perhaps be claimed for the following pages is an attempt to present a faithful picture of the administrative institutions as depicted in the \*Arthaśāstra\* from a conservative point of view, without attempting to expound these with a view to establishing any particular thesis as to the character of the government of the time. A work of this kind naturally is not precisely chronological in its character. Illustrations and illuminating comments are drawn without detriment from works of different times and perhaps even of places at great distances. The idea merely is to exhibit what the particular institutions were by means of which the functions of government were actually carried out. Unless we gain a correct idea of the actual character of the institutions as they prevailed from time to time as described in different treatises, or sources that may not really be treatises, it will be difficult to trace anything like a development of these institutions. Where that is not possible, the next best effort ought to be to get as complete a picture of these institutions as we can, and that is what is attempted to be done here, and, to that extent, it may lay itself open to the objection that it is not rigorously chronological; but in our present state of knowledge of the subject, that is as yet hardly possible. - [Previous: c5.2](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.dikshitar-1929.c5.2) - [Next: c5.4](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.dikshitar-1929.c5.4) - [Up: c5](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.dikshitar-1929.c5) ## Linked texts (1) - [Kauṭilīya Arthaśāstra](https://indike.org/pramana/in.niti.artha.kautilya) — Kauṭilya, Sanskrit --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.dikshitar-1929.c5.3](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.dikshitar-1929.c5.3) · Pramāṇa