The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c13.s1.40

c13.s1.40

Rounding off these considerations of Kauṭilya’s conception of the state, we can now perceive the well-nigh insurmountable difficulty that he found in his way. He wants to achieve a universalistic bureaucratic state, but he is forced to work within the context of a particularistic “tribal” system that effectively withholds the means needed to achieve the goal to the extent that he has to take the radical step of imagining his ideal, independently and rationally acting king as completely cut off from his social environment.