A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c8.s3.100

c8.s3.100

chiefs. He may further cause the victorious chief to be slain by rousing the hostility of the people. Or else he may secretly punish the high-born princes and chiefs and himself seize the kingdom. For, as this extreme champion of egotistic selfishness remarks, on account of the kingdom the father hates his sons and the sons their father; what, then, of the amātya who is the sole prop of the kingdom? The amātya should not, Bhāradvāja goes on, discard what has fallen into his hands of its own accord, for it is a popular saying that a woman making love of her own accord curses her man when she is discarded. Opportunity comes once only to a person who is waiting for the same, and it is hard to be attained again by the person who wants to accomplish his work.∗ In the above passage, we think, the statecraft of the early Arthaśāstra reaches its nadir. It has not even the saving grace of regard for the public interest which, in Machiavelli for instance, is the grand justification of the author. On the contrary the author parades his creed of unbridled selfishness and holds up the State itself as the standing example of its free play.