A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c9.91

c9.91

Let us try, in conclusion, to form an estimate of Kauṭilya's influence in moulding the subsequent development of political theory. We have already endeavoured to show what in our view was the true nature of Kauṭilya's achievement, namely that he carried into effect a virtual reconstruction of the science of Arthaśāstra. Keeping this point in our mind we may perhaps trace Kauṭilya's influence in three principal directions. In his own field he became the founder of a tradition of statecraft which earned for its author some amount of opprobrium at a later period,∗ but was nevertheless adopted by enthusiastic disciples like Kāmandaka and the Jaina Somadevasūri. In the second place Kauṭilya by retouching a number of categories and concepts discussed by his predecessors, gave them such a stamp of finality that his conclusions were accepted without a demur in the later canonical as well as Nītiśāstra literatures.† Finally, we are of opinion, although we are here treading on a slippery ground, that Kauṭilya's remarkable reconstruction of the Arthaśāstra may have prepared the way for, if not stimulated, that wholesale incorporation of the Arthaśāstra material into the system of the Brahminical canon, which, it seems to us, is the dominant note of the rājadharma sections of the Manusamhitā and the Mahābhārata.