A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c9.20

c9.20

Kauṭilya’s theories relating to the category of the seven elements of sovereignty follow on the whole the lines laid down by his predecessors. Thus he arranges the ‘calamities’ of these elements in a graded scale, reverting to the order of an unnamed authority whom he quotes.∗ Kauṭilya, however, applies in one place† the phrase limb-like (pratyaṅgabhūtāḥ) to the seven elements indicating, we think, in however rudimentary a form, the conception of organic unity of the factors of government.