A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c9.3

c9.3

In the course of our survey of Hindu political ideas in the preceding period, we have endeavoured to describe the surviving fragments of the lost literature of Arthaśāstra. The great work which shall occupy our attention in this chapter belongs, as its title indicates, to the same branch of literature as these forgotten treatises. But it is conspicuously distinguished from the rest from the point of view of its general plan and purpose. In the very opening lines the author seems to strike his distinctive note, for he says, “This single Arthaśāstra (work) has been prepared mostly by summarising whatever Arthaśāstra (treatises) were prepared by the early masters regarding the acquisition and the preservation of dominion.” The Arthaśāstra of Kauṭilya thus announces itself as an abstract of the earlier literature on the subject. It might appear from the above that Kauṭilya drew the diversified and often conflicting views of his predecessors into a common synthesis. This description, we think, corresponds at the best to one aspect of this author’s performance. The other and the more important aspect is hinted at in the concluding verse which states, “This manual (śāstram) has been written by the person who quickly and angrily rescued (uddhritāni) at once the science (śāstram), the Art of War, and the earth that had passed to the Nanda king.”¹ In so far as the obvious reference to the science of Arthaśāstra in the above passage is concerned, we may perhaps explain it in some such manner as the following. In Kauṭilya’s time the literature of Arthaśāstra had grown to be a tangled maze of divergent views. This condition of the science provoked the indignation of Kauṭilya, an intensely practical teacher if ever there was one, and he undertook at once to sweep away those doubts and difficulties that clogged its progress.