War in Ancient India c11.65

c11.65

We notice this maṇḍala idea in the Āśramavāsa Parvan of the Mahābhārata.35 This portion of the Mahābhārata follows the Kauṭalyan principles and must be taken to be only later additions. It mentions the twelve maṇḍalas and distinguishes four kinds of enemies. It is said that these twelve, as also the sixty, having ministers for their foremost, should be looked after by the king. On these are said to depend the Ṣāḍguṇya. Or rather the attributes of these sixfold incidents rest on the seventy-two elements (12 and 60). and if this is carefully understood, a king might feel desirous of conquering the whole earth. We shall examine in the sequel the sixfold incidents. The foregoing survey makes one thing clear, viz. the increasing power of the ministers in the Arthaśāstra polity as contrasted with the king as the most important figure in the polity of the epic age. As we have it in modern times, the policy expressed through diplomacy was primarily in the hands of ministers of State in the fourth century B.C., as it is definitely laid down that the king can do nothing of his own will without consultation with his councillors. Hence the ministers are prominently mentioned among the seven elements and the seventy-two elements as well. It would be surely wrong to bring this kind of sovereignty into line with the idea of an unmoral and irresponsible sovereignty propounded by European writers of the Machiavellian type.