The Mauryan Polity c12.115

c12.115

(vii) The Laṅkāvatārasūtra probably 4th century A.D. of Āryasūra (this work was first translated into Chinese in A.D. 443, and again in A.D. 513, now with an appendix of 884 ślokas) mentions Kauṭalya as a ṛṣi.³ On this, Johnston, according to whom the lower limit of the Arthaśāstra is not later than A.D. 250, is obliged to make the following observation: “Evidently therefore at the end of the fifth century A.D. Kauṭalya was placed on a level with the ancient ṛṣis in point of age and the work which earned him this position must be at least several centuries earlier than that date.¹ Certainly the period from the third to the fifth century cannot be counted as ‘several centuries earlier’.