A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c9.65

c9.65

When we turn from the above survey of the Kauṭilyan statecraft to consider a point involved therein, namely the author’s attitude towards religion and morality, we find him following, as might be expected, in the footsteps of the early masters. We find him, in other words, frequently inculcating rules of a grossly unscrupulous nature on the plea of public interest and without the least pretence of moral disapproval. Thus Politics, distinguished as it is in the system of the Arthaśāstra as a separate science is, as before, further separated from the science of Ethics. Let us quote a few typical examples from Kauṭilya in support of our statement. Speaking of the conduct of a prince who is kept under restraint, Kauṭilya suggests among a number of harmless measures that the prince, having acquired a close intimacy with heretics, rich widows or merchants engaged in ocean traffic, may poison them and rob them of their wealth.∗ Speaking in the same connection with reference to the treatment of a prince kept under restraint, Kauṭilya coolly suggests in one place that secret emissaries may kill the abandoned prince with weapons or with poison. In another part of his book dealing with the suppression of disturbers of the public peace, Kauṭilya states that spies in disguise may mix with thievish foresters, and instigate them to attack companies of merchants and villagers and may contrive the assassination of those people with weapons or with poison.† In a later chapter where the author describes the measures ensuring what he calls the extirpation of disturbers of the king as well as the kingdom, he says that the king may for the sake of righteousness inflict secret punishment upon those wicked persons (dûṣyas), consisting of the royal favourites singly or collectively injuring the kingdom, who cannot be put down openly.∗ This form of punishment comprises, as the immediately following samples show, various methods of compassing the assassination of the culprit by the direct agency of spies as well as by the seduction of the culprits’ brothers, sons and wives.† In another place where he speaks of corporate bodies (saṅghas) Kauṭilya, while conceding that the well-disposed among these should be treated with conciliation and gifts, advises without even the pretence of an apology that the methods of dissension and secret punishment should be applied against those that are ill-disposed, and he proceeds to enumerate various concrete measures suggested to this effect by his remarkably fertile and resourceful intellect. Among these measures assassination in different forms plays an important part.‡ In the following section Kauṭilya declares that a weak king, when he is attacked by a powerful enemy, should avert the invasion either by making an alliance, or by means of the battle of intrigue (mantrayuddha) or treacherous fight (kūṭayuddha).