[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [Polity, law and society](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity) › [The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985) › c13 # The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c13: 9 Kauṭilya and the Ancient Indian State The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c13 - **Language:** English ## Contents - [c13.s1 2](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1) — 41 parts ### 9 Kauṭilya and the Ancient Indian State ### [c13.1](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.1) It is only natural that national claims and aspirations should look for justification to history. The finality and immutability of the past offers the fixed points of reference for justifying or rejecting the conditions and aspirations of the present. The rediscovery of Kauṭilya's \*Arthaśāstra\* therefore could hardly avoid making a considerable impression. Here at last the Indian intellectual found full and incontrovertible proof of the superior maturity of Indian political thought. No more grand, misty "spirituality," but hard-headed pragmatism. Of course, this momentous text did not offer a readymade model for the modern state as envisaged by nationalists. But that hardly is the point. Nationalist thinking remained no less wedded to Western political theory. But this alien matter had somehow to be anchored in Indian civilization; it had to be translated and justified in terms congenial to Indian history. It is here, I think, that Kauṭilya's \*Arthaśāstra\* made its most effective contribution. It offered a point de repère that enabled the political theorist to relate Western concepts and theories to elements of Indian tradition. In other words, what presented itself as alien theory could be shown to be after all not so overwhelmingly alien, and national identity could be vindicated by referring to the hallowed past. ### [c13.2](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.2) Though these concerns are perfectly valid and even laudable, they have a serious drawback. The past may be immutable, but not so the view we have of the past. The search for legitimation forces the past to answer the needs of the present and prevents the facts from speaking for themselves. Clearly our understanding of Kauṭilya's text was to suffer from the effort to translate the needs of the present in terms of the past. One may deplore that a lot was lost in translation, but it is only fair to observe that at least equal and cer- ### [c13.3](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.3) This essay first appeared in slightly different form in \*Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Süd- und Ostasiens\* 15 (1971): 5–22. Reprinted by permission. ### [c13.4](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.4) tainly more harmful confusion resulted from similar concerns with, for instance, the ancient Germanic or the medieval state. ### [c13.5](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.5) No plea for the self-evident need for scholarly objectivity can gainsay the fact that our view of the past does fulfill this necessary function of self-understanding and justification. But at the same time, there should be room for attention to the past irrespective of its possible uses or misuses in the present. This means the patient and sometimes fruitless task of listening to facts and documents for their own sake, without burdening them with our contemporary concerns. Not infrequently, they then appear of their own accord to be not all that remote from our problems. ### [c13.6](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.6) It is on this side that the case of the \*Arthaśāstra\* is still largely open. Though the philological study of the text has made significant progress,¹ we are, I feel, still very much in the dark about the purpose, the raison d'être of the work, or more succinctly: What is the problem that it tries to answer? ### 2 ### [c13.s1.1](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.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 ### [c13.s1.2](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.2) Moreover, the notion of the \*Arthaśāstra\*'s eminent practicability has already been effectively ridiculed by Daṇḍin's picture of a king who has mastered the science of the text and while listening in accordance with its prescripts to daily statements of payments and receipts is robbed of twice the amount by his clever bureaucrats.³ Even Kauṭilya has to admit that in spite of the financial controls he teaches, the officials' peculation can be as little ascertained as the amount of water drunk by fishes.⁴ And his most pratical advice in the matter would seem to be when he winds up the discussion on auditing by stating that the king should overlook minor offences and be content with even a small revenue.⁵ ### [c13.s1.3](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.3) All this, however, does not mean that the text can be written off as a pedantic exercise in irrelevance. It purports to be—and has been valued as—a serious treatise on "acquiring and managing the earth".⁶ It is based on methodical inquiry, that is on \*ānvīkṣikī\*, which according to Kauṭilya's definition investigates by means of methodical reasoning (\*hetubhir ānvīkṣamāṇā\*) Vedic lore, so as to decide what is right or wrong; economics as to gain and loss; and politics as to appropriate and inappropriate courses of action.⁷ To underline this scientific intent, the text claims that its composition is ruled by the thirty-two devices of exposition and argumentation (\*tantrayukti\*), which are enumerated, defined, and exemplified from the text in the last part of the book. This emphasis on scientific method and on the \*tantrayuktis\* gives us, I think, a clue as to the meaning and purpose of the \*Arthaśāstra\*. ### [c13.s1.4](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.4) Now science and scientific method in the classical Indian context should not, of course, be taken in our usual empiricist sense emphasizing precise observation and experiment. They center on debate that should lead to the right decision. Similarly, the \*Arthaśāstra\* wants to be primarily, not a straightforward manual of government and administration, but a guide for methodical argumentation and the proper handling of discussion on questions of statecraft. Viewed in this way, the seemingly pedantic enumerations and definitions fall into their proper places as aids toward articulate debate. Equally, the many discussions on the reasoned opinions of other teachers seem to be models of argumentation and discussion rather than refutations of previous views.⁸ ### [c13.s1.5](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.5) It is here, I think, that we have to look for the practical value of the \*Arthaśāstra\*. If we think of the importance of \*mantra\*, the consilium of king and councillors, it is easy to see that the art of argumentation and discussion is not a purely academic concern but a matter of extremely practical importance. The interesting point is that whereas administration usually was in the hands of specialized castes or, rather, families of brahmins, kāyasths, and the like who naturally tended to guard their expertise in arguing and deciding administrative business so as to be indispensable to their masters, the matter is here thrown wide open, and the master is invited to acquire the special skills of argumentation and debate that are the brahmin's, not the kṣatriya's, birthright and raison d'être. ### [c13.s1.6](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.6) It has been asserted that the \*Arthaśāstra\* is first and foremost concerned with matters of practical administration and that it has little to say on theoretical issues such as the origin and nature of the state.⁹ The practical aspects are certainly prominent, but primarily in the sense that practical politics depends on objective discussion. The \*Arthaśāstra's\* concern is with the terminology, arguments, and method that should articulate debate and help in reaching appropriate decisions. This should warn us against relying too confidently on it for our knowledge of the realities of ancient Indian political life. Perhaps its greatest importance for us lies in the field of theory, for the \*Arthaśāstra\* seems to be based on and permeated with a particular conception of state and kingship. ### [c13.s1.7](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.7) Now, if we are looking for a sacral theory of kingship, its origin and nature, we are bound to be disappointed. Kauṭilya does know such theories, but he treats them with characteristic disdain. Thus some secret agents should refer to such theories while their colleagues maintain that the king is simply an oppressor devoid of virtue; the reactions of the public to these altercations will then provide something of an opinion poll.¹⁰ These apparently popular theories are not refuted, they are simply left to subsist on their own, popular level, where they may even have some usefulness. But as a source of legitimation, they are completely indifferent to Kauṭilya. In fact it would seem that Kauṭilya would prefer his king to break away from the sacrality or divinity of kingship as a basis of the state. ### [c13.s1.8](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.8) Now, as Gonda puts it, "In India the divinity of kings, however small their domain, has always been accepted by the masses,"¹¹ and Kauṭilya recognizes this. But we should be clear as to what sacral kingship means in the Indian context. The sacral or divine king does not derive his authority from a transcendent principle, but from the community itself. As the chief organizer and celebrant of communal festivals, he symbolizes its essential unity. He is, as it were, the nodal point where the relationships of cooperation and rivalry that make up the community and that are ritually expressed in communal festivals come together. But by the same token, he remains enclosed in the web of personal relationships that constitute the community. This position is felicitously expressed in a brāhmaṇa text when it calls the king the "embryo" (\*garbha\*) of the \*viś\*, the common people.¹² In all his activities, he remains dependent on the community. He does not transcend it.¹³ ### [c13.s1.9](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.9) It is this situation, where the king is no more than a primus inter pares, that the \*Arthśāstra\* wants to remedy. The ideal Kauṭilyan king has an authority and a legitimation not derived from the community but all his own, for here the king's basic qualification is not his sacrality or divinity, but the \*indriyajaya\*, the victory over the senses,¹⁴ which sets him free from worldly interests. In this way, he becomes the worthy counterpart of the ideal brahmin, who is equally detached from worldly concerns. ### [c13.s1.10](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.10) It is interesting that the attainment of indriyajaya is said to be based on training in the sciences, first among them \*ānvīkṣikī\*, methodical inquiry. This means that the unpredictable pulls and pushes of personal relationships that hem in the king and his power of decision should be replaced, not by arbitrary despotism, but by objective methods of reasoning and decision making. What is at stake is no less than the founding of a state transcending the limitations of the tribal clan monarchy or oligarchy. ### [c13.s1.11](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.11) It would seem that this is the central issue of the \*Arthaśāstra\*. At the same time, however, this issue presents an insoluble dilemma. The king has to win his independence of action at the price of renouncing worldly interests, for it is the renunciatory value of indriyajaya that enables him truly to transcend the community. But what can then motivate the king, whose hard-won conquest of the senses has placed him above worldly interests, to acquire and increase his worldly power, in brief to act as a \*vijigīṣu\*, a conquerer? ### [c13.s1.12](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.12) Notwithstanding the obvious dilemma presented by Kauṭilya’s conception of the king—detached from worldly interests and yet striving for power—it might still have been possible to develop on this basis a viable supratribal state and a modicum of rationalization. But in order to realize such a set-up, it would be necessary to mobilize and concentrate a substantial part of the resources in the hands of the king, so as to give him a decisive measure of power and independence from his social environment, where otherwise he has to remain only a primus inter pares. The mobilization and administration of resources again requires an equally independent bureaucracy, working with objective methods. Indeed, the second book of the \*Arthaśāstra\* does deal with such a bureaucracy. But here the formidable difficulties come out clearest. I referred already to Kauṭilya’s somewhat dispirited sayings about the near-impossibility of controlling peculation in the treasury. In fact, the impressive bureaucracy seems more of a machinery for the diffusion of resources than for their pooling and husbanding. ### [c13.s1.13](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.13) In these circumstances, one will of course look with some expectation to the crucial question of financial control and audit. Kauṭilya does indeed give a detailed description of the accounts and audit office, the akṣapaṭala. The rules for auditing suggest a thoroughly detailed investigation, in Breloer’s words “ein regelrechter Abrechnungsprozess”.¹⁵ All officers should assemble on the full-moon day of the month of Āṣāḍha, at the end of the hot season, with sealed accounts and with balances to be paid in the treasury. They are confined and forbidden to speak with each other. Fines are prescribed for those coming late or without their account books. Not only the small bureaucrats but also the highest officers, the \*mahāmātras\*, are involved. All in all, it must have been an impressive gathering.¹⁶ ### [c13.s1.14](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.14) The essential question, however, is: Which body or which persons form the auditing authority? For proper auditing implies that there should be an impartial agency watching over the procedure and responsible for the verdict. It would seem that Scharfe shows us the right way. According to his carefully researched translation, the crucial passage runs as follows. The mahāmātras should unanimously proclaim who has proceeded correctly. He who puts himself apart (i.e., breaks the unanimity) or talks untruth should pay in full the highest fine.¹⁷ Scharfe concludes convincingly that the mahāmātras are the judges in the auditing process.¹⁸ One is reminded of the twelfth-century English Exchequer, which was simply the curia regis sitting for the regulation of matters of finance.¹⁹ ### [c13.s1.15](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.15) Now this circumstance has consequences into which Scharfe does not go, but which decisively impair the concept of objective bureaucratic procedures. First, there is the strong emphasis on unanimity—a unanimity that is even enforced with heavy fines. It is difficult to understand the need for this, since the decisive factor in acquitting the accountable officer is in his written accounts, not in the unanimity of the judges. More serious is the fact that the mahāmātras are themselves interested parties, even though the officers whose accounts are to be audited may be lower in rank. They can hardly be considered to constitute an impartial agency. We have only to think of a mahāmātra like the samāhartṛ to realize what abuses this could imply. Enforced unanimity obviously would only worsen the situation. ### [c13.s1.16](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.16) The most serious point, however, is that we are not told how the mahāmātras themselves render their accounts.²⁰ Even if one wants to avoid the argumentum e silentio, the reticence on this important point cannot be overlooked. If, then, the mahāmātras on the one hand are the judges in the auditing process and on the other hand do not render their own accounts in any clearly prescribed way, they are more like a body of cosharers with the king than regular bureaucrats. The elaborate bureaucratic procedure, thought out to ensure the king's independence of action, comes to nought, and the king is once again no more than a primus inter pares. ### [c13.s1.17](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.17) The obvious unevenness of a bureaucratic auditing process based on written accounts and the curious position of the mahāmātras bring us to another question. From where did Kauṭilya take the idea of an impressive gathering in the month of Āṣāḍha? Here again Scharfe seems to point in the right direction when he suggests a possible connection with the Vedic \*varuṇa-praghāsa\* sacrifice, which also takes place on the full-moon day of Āṣāḍha or of Śrāvaṇa, at any rate, right before the onset of the monsoon.²¹ ### [c13.s1.18](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.18) Although this sacrifice, which incidentally forms part, together with the other seasonal sacrifices, of the royal ritual (\*rājasūya\*), is not presented in the ritual texts as a collective festival—like other śrauta sacrifices it is described as strictly a single-sacrificer affair—it is not difficult to read between the lines its origin in a collective ceremony, as is the case with the śrauta sacrifice in general.²² In other words, behind Kauṭilya's auditing process lies a festive tribal gathering. ### [c13.s1.19](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.19) Viewed in this light, the strong emphasis on unanimity comes into its own. It is reminiscent of the traditional pañcāyat and similar gatherings, where we also find this stress on unanimity and consensus as a corollary of the strife and factionalism characteristic of the little community. Unanimity and consensus have their proper place in the tribal order, with its diffusion of power and authority. In the bureaucratic order, where power and authority are clearly articulated and decisions have to be made in a rationalized way, they can only be of marginal importance, as seems to be the case in Kauṭilya's auditing process. This means that Kauṭilya wants to realize a bureaucratic order, but is held back by the tribal order, which wrecks his intentions. ### [c13.s1.20](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.20) In order to arrive at a fuller understanding of Kauṭilya's problem and its context, we must first try to find out more about the nature of the festival that seems to lie at the root of the auditing process. In this way, we may be able to understand what opening the festival offered for the intended transformation into a bureaucratic procedure. ### [c13.s1.21](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.21) In the first place, when we take the description of the varuṇapraghāsa as our guide,²³ this festival is essentially concerned with guilt and atonement. No doubt any sacrifice involves guilt and expiation, be it only on account of the immolation involved, but here they are the central issue. As the \*Maitrāyaṇī\* and \*Kāṭhaka Saṃhitās\* tell it, Prajāpati created the beings through the \*vaiśvadeva\* seasonal sacrifice that is performed at the end of the cool season four months earlier, but they were seized by poverty and anxiety (\*aṃhas\*), or rather by Varuṇa.²⁴ The express purpose of the varuṇapraghāsa is the release from Varuṇa's bonds, and this motive recurs in the brāhmaṇa explanations of all the sacrifice's distinctive features. As the brāhmaṇas put it: "As little guilt (\*enas\*) as there is in a child just born, so little guilt is there in him who performs the varuṇapraghāsa sacrifice".²⁵ ### [c13.s1.22](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.22) The motive of atonement is also made prominent in the curious role assigned to the sacrificer's wife. She is led up by the pratiprasthātṛ officiant from her usual place at the back of the sacrificial emplacement behind the gārhapatya hearth and bluntly asked who her paramour is, or even worse, how many paramours she has.²⁶ She is expected to state truthfully the name of her paramour, who is then cursed to be seized by Varuṇa. It would, of course, be unwarranted to take this confession rite as evidence for ancient Indian habits and morality. The main point is the reversal that turns untruth (\*anṛta\*) into truth (\*ṛta, satya\*) and transfers untruth to the rival, who is seized by Varuṇa. ### [c13.s1.23](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.23) That this rite should have the sacrificer's wife as its focus can perhaps be explained by the ambivalent position of women in the exclusively patrilineal brahminical system. In the context of the system's stress on the identification of father and son, woman's role is all but excluded. She passes out of her own family, and she cannot be fully integrated in the family into which she marries except as the passive means that enables the father to be reborn as his own son, without propagating herself.²⁷ She has to remain an element of insecurity between the two lineages which, through her, establish or maintain connubium. In this way, we can understand why in the \*Maitrāyaṇī\* and \*Kāṭhaka Saṃhitās\* woman is roundly identified with untruth, as against sacrifice, which is truth. In fact, it is not so much the infidelity of woman that seems to be at stake here as it is the ambivalent relationship between the two families or clans whose connubial alliance is represented by woman, for if she would not tell the truth, it is not she who is to suffer but a relative of hers.²⁸ ### [c13.s1.24](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.24) The consideration of the wife's "act of truth" brings us to a further point: the ritual of atonement is played out by two parties that are linked by connubial alliance—an alliance that involves both cooperation and strife. The ambivalence of this relationship is also expressed elsewhere. Thus evil (\*pāpman\*) is to be taken away from the aśvamedha sacrificer by affinal relatives, the son of a younger sister of the sacrificer's father and the son of a younger sister of his mother.²⁹ In the same vein, it is prayed that the rival (\*sapatna\*) may be subjugated like the daughter-inlaw.³⁰ In the varuṇapraghāsa, this idea receives expression in the unusual feature of two \*vedis\*, "altars," each with its own offering fire—the main northern one served by the adhvaryu, and the southern smaller one served by his assistant, the pratiprasthātṛ.³¹ The northern vedi is said to be the sacrificer's own, whereas the southern one belongs to his rival (\*bhrātṛvya\*);³² or the northern vedi is the \*yoni\*, the birthplace, of the "eaters," and the other the yoni of those that are to be "eaten";³³ or again, the northern one is connected with Varuṇa, with spiritual and temporal dominion (\*brahman\* and \*kṣatra\*), the southern one with the Maruts or the people (\*viś\*).³⁴ ### [c13.s1.25](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.25) So rival, viś, and Maruts are put on a par through their common connection with the southern vedi. And it is of course this southern vedi that serves the purpose of the disposal of untruth (\*anṛta\*) and Varuṇa's bonds. Thus the milk dish for the Maruts and the dishes made of barley groats (\*karambhapātrāṇi\*)—the latter a distinctive feature of this sacrifice—are placed on the sourthern vedi and offered in the southern fire, as against the milk dish for Varuṇa and the other offerings that are placed on the northern vedi and offered in the northern fire. The offerings in the sourthern fire signify the disposal of anṛta and Varuṇa's bonds as well as the subjugation of the opponent, the recalcitrant viś, or the Maruts.³⁵ ### [c13.s1.26](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.26) In this conflict between the two parties in the sacrifice, the sacrificer's wife plays a central part. She is first, when she is led up by the pratiprasthātṛ, associated with the Maruts, for while leading her up, he invokes the Maruts and makes her recite the same mantra.³⁶ It would seem that the Maruts and the southern fire represent her own relatives, whose connubial link with the sacrificer’s party she embodies. The resolution of the conflict therefore centers on her as well as her husband. Having been led up and made to confess, she and the sacrificer together make the offering of the karambhapātrāṇi in the southern fire. While the sacrificer alone recites the invitatory stanza invoking Indra and the Maruts, the two together recite the offering verse: ‘‘What sin (\*enas\*) we have committed in the community or in the jungle, in the gathering (\*sabhā\*) or in ourselves (\*indriye\*) against the śūdra or the ārya, whatever sin we have committed against anybody’s right, of that sin you are the expiation, \*svāhā\*.’’³⁷ Thus not only the wife has been in the wrong, for both sacrificer and wife must atone together, but it is only through her cooperation that the conflict can be resolved and harmony restored.³⁸ Marital union, pairing (\*mithuna\*), is said to be essential for release from Varuṇa’s bonds.³⁹ ### [c13.s1.27](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.27) So far we have seen that the festival’s pivotal issue is atonement and that this is worked out in a conflict and its resolution between two parties that seem to be linked with each other through connubium. But before we can round off the picture, one more question remains to be answered. What is the sin, the guilt, that has to be expiated? In a way the guilt seems to lie in the strife between the two parties. When Prajāpati created the \*prajāḥ\*, ‘‘the beings,’’ through the preceding seasonal sacrifice, they treated him with disdain and left him. Prajāpati, becoming Varuṇa, seized them;⁴⁰ alternately, it is said that, when created, they or Prajāpati’s sacrifice were attacked by the Maruts.⁴¹ Here it would seem that guilt indeed lies in strife, for it is difficult to see why the prajāḥ should have to expiate the aggressiveness of the Maruts. Unless, of course, as seems quite probable, the prajāḥ and the Maruts are actually the same; the prajāḥ fall out with Prajāpati, and the Maruts are said to rob Prajāpati’s sacrificial viands. Both prajāḥ and Maruts seem equally guilty,⁴² and both are in the position of viś. The nature of the original sin is, however, explained in clearer terms by the \*Śatapatha\*: when created, the prajāḥ ate Varuṇa’s barleycorn, and because of that Varuṇa seized them.⁴³ ### [c13.s1.28](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.28) It seems to be possible to translate these mythological statements about disobedience, strife, and the eating of Varuṇa’s barley into terms of social reality. After the vaiśvadeva festival, at the end of the cold season when the harvest reaped in autumn after the monsoon was exhausted, people had to leave their homesteads in search of food and pastures, this food being mainly the winter crop of barley. That is, the appropriated "Varuṇa's barley." As the \*Kāṭhaka Saṃhitā\* explains: "Varuṇa is the cold season, therefore these two (barley and the \*śamī\* tree) do not wither in the cold season."⁴⁴ Now a precious text gives us exactly this picture when it describes the cycle of activities round the year of the Kurupañcālas: in the cold season they start out toward the east; there they seize the barley crop, feed their men and animals, and finally, at the end of the hot season before the onset of the monsoon, they return to the west to work their fields and harvest the monsoon crop.⁴⁵ So the year is divided in two parts with contrasting patterns of conduct: the time starting from the end of the hot season that one spends at home in the settled community to work one's fields and the time of the year, starting with the cool season, that is marked by transhumance, forays in search of food, and razzias. This latter half of the year, the lean season, is characterized by violence and conflict, as against the quiet and peaceful season of the settled community. In short, it is the season of the \*vrātya\* expeditions and of the aggressiveness and disobedience of the \*praghāsya\*, or greedy, Maruts.⁴⁶ ### [c13.s1.29](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.29) Viewed in this light, the nature of the guilt and expiation here is clear. The varuṇapraghāsa, or rather, the festival that lies at its root, signifies the turning point between the season of violent strife and the season of settled life and harmony. The people that have gone out to lead an irregular life outside the settled community are now reintegrated into the community and brought again under the sway of its norms. ### [c13.s1.30](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.30) Our brief survey of the nature of the festival that closes the raiding season—atonement for the evil of violent strife and restoration of harmony—seems to offer a perfect opening for the transformation into the bureaucratic \*règlement des comptes\* intended by Kauṭilya. In both, there is an opposition between two parties whose conflict is resolved.⁴⁷ In this connection, it may be worthwhile to look more closely at the \*akṣapaṭala\*, the records and audit hall, or more literally, the hall of \*akṣas\*. These akṣas can be easily explained as counters used in the computation, although this is not made explicit. However, there seems to be more behind it. ### [c13.s1.31](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.31) Kauṭilya's akṣapaṭala is situated in the southeast part of the royal residence.⁴⁸ It is perhaps no mere coincidence that the \*Āpastamba Dharmasūtra\* also places a \*sabhā\*, "meeting hall," to the south of the royal residence and that in this sabhā we find a sacrificial fire and a place for dicing.⁴⁹ This dicing hall would seem to be the sphere of activity of a special officer, the \*akṣarakṣitṛ\*, the keeper of the dice, whom we encounter in the purāṇic rājadharma texts among the king's retainers (\*sahāya\*) and who recalls the \*akṣāvāpa\*, one of the "jewel bearers" (\*ratnin\*) in the rājasūya.⁵⁰ Though the akṣarakṣitṛ is clearly connected with dicing, his qualifications suggest a bureaucrat concerned with accounts: he should know income and expenditure, the productivity of the land, and the tasks of the king's servants.⁵¹ Here the royal game of dice with its ritual associations shades over almost imperceptibly into the bureaucratic process of accounting and auditing. Almost, for though both the puranic rājadharma texts and Kauṭilya seem consciously to gloss over the difference, this should not deceive us. Obviously there is a world of difference between the sacral king and his tribal assembly, where wealth, power, and prestige are periodically redistributed through contests, verbal and otherwise, including dicing games, and the bureaucratic state with its objective methods of administration and decision making. ### [c13.s1.32](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.32) Thus, in the royal game of dice that forms part of the rājasūya, we see the king take part on an equal footing with the other players, and it is significant that the stake of the game—a cow or a dish of food (\*odana\*)—is divided in differential share among the participants.⁵² It is a matter of redistribution of resources, diametrically opposed to bureaucratic management. In this context, the king clearly does not transcend the community. He is ritually "reborn" through the agonistic interaction of his equals.⁵³ This idea of the king's ritual "birth" figures largely throughout the whole royal ritual, he is "born," as already mentioned, as the garbha of the viś. And this idea fits in perfectly with the conception of the community as being made up of connubial relations.⁵⁴ He is, as it were, the nexus and issue of these bonds, and it is not surprising that connubium, as we saw, takes up an important place in the atonement and reintegration festival. ### [c13.s1.33](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.33) From this perspective we can, I think, readily understand the mahāmātrās' role as cosharers or holders of differential rights in the realm, among whom the king is but a primus inter pares. Indeed, Kauṭilya seems to concede as much when he deals with succession at the death of the king. In case there is no obvious successor, an \*amātya\*, a minister or household officer, should present a likely pretendent to the assembled mahāmātras, saying: "This one is a trust with you, consider his father, his quality, and noble birth and that of yourselves; he is but the standard, you are the masters".⁵⁵ Obviously this is a stratagem to obtain the consent of the assembly, but in order to be effective, this flattering statement about the status of the mahāmātras should have a firm basis in the accepted norms. We have, therefore, to conclude that the mahāmātras are not far from being \*svāminaḥ\*, masters of the realm. They closely resemble in this respect the ratnins in the rājasūya, who are said to be "the givers and takers of kingdom."⁵⁶ ### [c13.s1.34](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.34) Considering the realities of socioeconomic life, this could hardly have been otherwise. For the crux of the matter is the problem of free resources. ### [c13.s1.35](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.35) These had to be found in the agricultural productivity of the kingdom. Now the king, whatever the legal theory, was not in practice the exclusive owner of the soil. In fact, it would be misleading to think of exclusive individual ownership in our sense at all. Rather, the situation should be viewed as one where the members of the community hold differential rights in the productivity of the same lands. This is clearly demonstrated by the traditional “division of the grain heap” at harvest time, our of which the king’s share had to come.⁵⁷ This was a most intricate system of shares and deductions both from the standing and from the harvested crop. The complexity was enhanced by the use of both proportions and absolute measures. The details varied from place to place, but the procedure was easy to handle for the local participants, because the shares were allotted while going along and no aggregate data were required. By the same token, however, it is hardly possible to reduce the king’s—or any other’s—share to a manageable numerical formula, a problem that haunted the British as well as the pre-British land revenue administration. ### [c13.s1.36](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.36) The traditional system clearly expresses that the king’s rights in the soil are inextricably enmeshed with those of the other members of the community. It certainly was an equitable system in that each received a share according to his place in the community, but it did not leave the king much freedom for mobilizing resources. He would have to upset the delicate balance forcibly—a thing that he could only manage safely if he had already concentrated sufficient power in his hands to face the consequences of serious disturbances. Kauṭilya shows himself keenly aware of this when he advises the king, as we saw, to be content with even a small revenue. ### [c13.s1.37](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.37) The problem is further complicated in that this land system implies a low degree of monetization. In order to realize a modicum of centralized power, the king would have to remunerate his officers in the neutral medium of cash and to concentrate the superior rights in the soil (and the political rights that go with it) in his own hands. Or, in other words, he would have to transform the body of cosharers, of “givers and takers of the realm,” into a corps of salaried officers. Indeed, Kauṭilya does give us pay scales for the different grades of mahāmātras. However, as it was, the king had to remain content with the diffusion of rights throughout the community, or at least throughout the ranks of the mahāmātras—a circumstance that Kauṭilya apparently acknowledges. The pay scales therefore seem a simplified conventional formula for status differences rather than real salaries. ### [c13.s1.38](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.38) The only means for the king to achieve control seems to be all-embracing espionage. But how to pay and control the agents? In fact, the king is reduced to operating the system of personal relationships from within, as a participant in it, by balancing the different factions that jealously watch each other. Not only does the king have to spy on his officers, but everybody has to spy on everybody else. Pervasive watching and spying may well be the truth behind Kauṭilya’s presentation of espionage as an independent means of control in the hands of the king alone. It is typically a factional system in which the king represents no more than one faction among many others. The only way to stay on top is for the king to play the factions against each other and to have them keep each other in check. Thus Kauṭilya recommends that the administrative departments be headed, not by one, but by many officers.⁵⁸ In the same way, he advises that there be more than one commander in the garrisons, so that out of fear for each other they will abstain from entering into deals with the enemy.⁵⁹ Under the circumstances, this certainly is a sound policy, but it can hardly contribute toward bureaucratic efficiency of government and administration. ### [c13.s1.39](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.39) Briefly then, whichever way we look, in practice the essence of the system remains diffusion of power and scattering of resources. ### [c13.s1.40](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.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. ### [c13.s1.41](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13.s1.41) His strategy for dealing with the intractable gap between practice and theory is not to destroy the existing tribal order and to replace it with the order of the centralized bureaucratic state—as we saw, this would anyhow be hard to do. We noted already how the \*Arthaśāstra\* and other texts glossed over the chasm between the two orders. They take a concept or an institution from the tribal order and present it in terms of the opposite order. This is not just wishful thinking; it is realistic in that it shows how the old may change into the new, transforming existing institutions. But there is no intention to force the change. Rather than destroy the existing forms, Kauṭilya prefers to cumulate the old and the new without forcing a decision. He offers a different, ideal orientation point for the transformation of the state but remains in tune with the redistributive system based on the interdependence of the participants and geared to the immediate equitable diffusion of resources. It is this combination that seems to govern India to the present day. Modern India does have its competent planners and top bureaucrats, but, as in Kauṭilya’s day, the modern mahāmātras—the chief ministers of the states and other regional leaders—bargain on an equal footing with the central authorities for the distribution of power and resources. ## Linked texts (5) - [Kauṭilīya Arthaśāstra](https://indike.org/pramana/in.niti.artha.kautilya) — Kauṭilya, Sanskrit - [Kāṭhakasaṃhitā](https://indike.org/pramana/in.veda.samhita.krsnayajur*kathaka) — Sanskrit - [Maitrāyaṇīsaṃhitā](https://indike.org/pramana/in.veda.samhita.krsnayajur*maitrayani) — Sanskrit - [Brāhmaṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/in.veda.brahmana) — Sanskrit - [Śatapathabrāhmaṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/in.veda.brahmana.satapatha) — Yājñavalkya & Śāṇḍilya (Vedic teacher), Sanskrit --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c13) · Pramāṇa