A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c10.99

c10.99

Coming to the domain of foreign policy properly so called, we find the canonical authors making in the style of the Arthaśāstra expediency the grand canon of statecraft. In chapter CXXXVIII of the Śāntiparvan Yudhiṣṭhira asks how the king should behave when he is swallowed up by many foes. How, he continues, can the king acquire friends and foes, and how should he behave towards them? Bhīṣma replies by expounding what he calls the esoteric duty that is applicable in times of distress. The foe, he says, becomes a friend and the friend becomes disaffected owing to the regard for self-interest. The course of affairs is constantly shifting, hence the king should repose confidence as well as wage war. In a later passage Bhīṣma drives his lesson home by indulging in an apparent paradox. The unwise man, he says, who does not constantly ally himself with the foe fails to attain his desires or even slight rewards, while he who with an eye to his own interest makes an alliance with the foe and war with the friend wins great success.†