A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c11.s1.2

c11.s1.2

Of the works with which we are concerned in this chapter we shall first select for examination the one which divides with the Śukranītisāra the credit of being the most popular text-book on the science of polity in the whole range of Hindu literature.∗ The Nītisāra of Kāmandaka, as this treatise is called, may well claim to be reckoned as the representative of the literature of Arthaśāstra during this period, for its author professes in the genuine style of the latter class of works to deal with the acquisition and the protection of territory.† Nevertheless there can, we think, be no comparison between Kāmandaka and his predecessors in the same field, for he can not, unlike the latter, lay claim to the merit of originality or even of first-hand study of the phenomena of the State. Out of love for the science of polity, he says in the context in which the passage just quoted occurs, we shall teach something that is approved by those versed in the royal policy. This is evidently the language not of one in touch with practical politics, but of a man of books. Kāmandaka moreover leaves us in no doubt as to the source of his inspiration. For in the same context he deliberately announces his work to be based upon the teaching (darśana) of Viṣṇugupta (Kauṭilya) whose ancestry and achievements he extols in the highest terms.∗ The Essence of Polity, then, according to the explicit testimony of its own author, is a scholar's compilation based principally upon the Arthaśāstra of Kauṭilya. In accordance with this description we find that the author, while excluding from his purview the whole of Kauṭilya's material relating to civil law and the departments of the administration, furnishes what amounts to a metrical paraphrase of the rest. It must, however, he remembered to Kāmandaka's credit that he arranges his borrowed material under more convenient headings, while he multiplies, it may be with pedantic thoroughness, the categories into which his master's rules of public policy are resolvable.† While Kauṭilya's work is the chief source of Kāmandaka's inspiration, he is indebted, as we hope to show presently, to the Brāhmanical canon for some phases of his thought.