The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c13.s1.1

c13.s1.1

It seems hardly likely that Kauṭilya's purpose was to fill some pressing need for a practical manual of statecraft and administration. If such a need was felt, the text certainly does not answer it. Its teaching on administration is either too detailed or too vague to be of much practical use, the tricks prescribed for the secret agents are actually rather elementary, and generally there is too much of the obvious to make its study worthwhile for the practitioner. Thus the second book deals at considerable length with a long list of administrative departments but significantly leaves out the important point of how these departments tie in with each other and with the whole of the administrative machinery. Specifically, the text leaves its student in the dark about who is responsible to whom. Delegation, chains of command, and reporting are conspicuous by their absence. It is even possible to be in doubt as to whether the important official called *samāhartṛ* is a provincial "collector" or the chief administrative officer of the state as a whole in the manner of a dīwān.²