A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c9.10

c9.10

been advanced on the point in recent times. The crux of the problem lies in this case in the meaning of the word ‘uddhritāni’ with reference to its application to the science of Artha-śāstra in the concluding verse of Kauṭilya which has been quoted above. Prof. Jacobi (loc. cit.) explains the term in the sense of ‘reformed,’ and he describes the purport to be that Kauṭilya contemptuously brushed aside the dogmatic views of his *doctrinaire* predecessors. This explanation is evidently a forced one, and we agree with Prof. D. R. Bhandarkar (op. cit., p. 109, footnote 1) in rejecting it. Judging indeed from the meagre extracts cited by Kauṭilya and Kāmandaka, the views of the early teachers of the Arthaśāstra may often appear to be crude and one-sided, but they cannot, we think, be justly charged with being unpractical.