The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c14.s1.26

c14.s1.26

It might be objected that the nexus of the sacrificial contest belongs to the mythic imagination of Veda and epic and has no direct bearing on the realities of realm and kingship. However, the same pattern of diffusion and institutionalized conflict is illustrated and elaborated in "secular" fashion in the ancient Indian lore of statecraft, the *Arthaśāstra* of Kauṭilya. I am referring to the sixth book, which deals with the so-called circle of kings (*maṇḍalayoni*).³¹ Kingship and realm consist of seven constituents (*prakṛti*): king, minister, country, fort, treasury, army, and ally. I mentioned already the inclusion of the ally, which shows that the modern conception of the unambiguously bounded territorial state does not apply. Kauṭilya's realm is open-ended and tied in with other such realms. This open-endedness goes even further, for immediately after the seventh constituent, the text discusses the enemy as an unnumbered eighth constituent.³² The analysis continues, enumerating the kings that constitute the circle. In the first place, there is the would-be conquering king, the *vijigīṣu*, who is taken as the center. He has his ally and the ally of his ally. The enemy is, of course, similarly constituted, and so are the neutral king (*madhyama*) and the uninvolved one (*udāsīna*), each with his ally and ally's ally. We then get a "circle" of twelve kings, each with his five other prakṛtis, which makes a total of seventy-two constituents organized in overlapping groupings.³³