A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c9.74

c9.74

Thus Kauṭilya would seem to betray in his rules of policy a more or less complete indifference towards morality. His attitude towards religion is more complex. As we have seen in another place, Kauṭilya deliberately dissociates himself from those radical schools that eliminated the Vedas from the list of sciences.§ In the same connection he urges the king not to upset the canonical scheme of duties relating to the castes and the orders, on the ground that the performance of these leads to heaven and salvation, while their violation would result in intermixture and destruction of the people. And yet it would seem as if Kauṭilya, in framing his actual system of statecraft could not resist the temptation of turning religion into an instrument of State policy. In the list of spies mentioned by Kauṭilya, for instance, no less than three out of nine specified classes belong to pseudo-religious orders, no doubt because the cloak of religion was held best to ensure the success of espionage.∗ This tendency of the author to indulge in the political exploitation of religion is more clearly exhibited in his section on the replenishment of the treasury.† There Kauṭilya suggests among a number of other measures that the Superintendent of religious institutions (devatādhyakṣa) may set up at night a shrine of the gods or a place sacred to the pious ascetics, and earn his subsistence by holding processions and congregations. Or else, Kauṭilya goes on, he may proclaim the arrival of the gods by pointing to a tree in the temple garden, that has borne untimely fruits and flowers. These suggestions are followed by other rules to the same effect, but we need not concern ourselves with them.‡ As another illustration of the author's attitude towards religion it may be mentioned that he advises the would-be conqueror to afflict the enemy and hearten his friends by proclaiming, through various methods of religious deception which he specifies, the conqueror's association with the gods.§